Would The Performance Impact of an SSD Effect Programs Running From An HDD

[Guest]

I want to buy an SSD to use as my prinary drive and use a relatively large(3tb) external HDD I got as a gift to store my data. However, capacity is an issue. Based on how much data would be needed for all my programs, I would need something at the tail end of the 300GB range and into the 400s at least, maybe even 500s if I want to thoroughly future proof it. However, my current budget is barely enough for a 480GB SSD, and the only capacity I'm seeing sold smaller than that isn't enough space.

Although, something I saw made me wonder if there would still be performance improvements even if the program was stored separate from the SSD. If that's the case, I can make due with a significantly smaller capacity and run my larger and/or lower priority programs from the external HDD.

Is that true? Should I go with a 480+GB SSD? Would something like 240GB actually be plenty?

If it helps, I use my PC for a moderate amount of gaming and image editing. I'll also be looking into animation down the pike when I've obtained various other upgrades for my computer.

 

[USAFRet]

Not everything needs to run from the SSD. Games, in particular.

I have a 120GB drive, and it holds the OS and all applications. Office, video, photo, programming, utilities....
Other things live on other drives.

As far as performance? Even applications that may live on a different drive may see a bit of a boost, because the OS that does live on the SSD is also doing things when you run an application. Not huge, but a little bit.

What applications do you use that would actually begin to fill up a 500GB drive?

 

[Guest]

"What applications do you run that would fill a 500GB hard drive?" (I would quote this, but the mobile version of the site isn't letting me do that.)

All of the games I currently own and games that I plan to buy soon add up to just under 240GB. I probably have an additional 10-20 GB of programs currently running on my HDD(the on that is in my current computer). Alloting room for patches to these games, mods, and add-ons for other programs, and giving myself additional room to grow, I get the figure in the upper 300s as a minimum. Since all the SSDs I looked at jump from 256GB of capacity to 480, then to 512, I'm looking in those ranges. It also doesn't hurt to get a little extra if I can actually afford it, in case my estimates of how much future content will be on my drives is off.

 

[USAFRet]

Samsung 850 EVO, 500GB