Just a queston regarding storage decisions

[Pwndenburg]

Hello all,

Happy belated thanksgiving and merry Christmas. Anyway, I currently have a 120 gb samsung 830 which performs quite up to my expectations; however, I would obviously love to have a little more room to put critical apps on SSD. In addition to that I find myself a bit limited with my 750 gig WD black. I also have one other question. Does it truly matter if an HD has 32 meg or 64 meg of cache?

I have an i7 4770 nonk, so all are running under SATA 3. I've been looking at that sweet 1 tb model of the evo but it seems such a waste to pay that much for storage. Also, I do not know the technical details but have been lead to believe that the larger an HD is the more failure prone it is. So, should I drop that cash and get the SSD of my dreams or risk the big multi-plater HDs?

 

[Hellhammer]

I don't think big HDs are any more likely to fail than small ones but the catch here is that more data is lost with a big drive versus several smaller ones. Hence it can be better to get two 2TBs instead of one 4TB for instance.

However, I think we need more info about your needs. You currently have 120GB SSD + 750GB HD but how much storage would you need? An SSD isn't really worthwhile for media storage, so a 1TB SSD might be an overkill unless you really need that much for apps, games and other critical data.

 

[Pwndenburg]

My apologies for not giving adequate information. As dumb as it may seem, I simply want to keep all my steam games installed so I can play them whenever I get the whim.

Based on my calculations, I'll need ~1.2 TB CURRENTLY to do this. So obviously those needs could change over time.

 

[Charlie98]

Just remember... an SSD doesn't make game play any better, the only thing it may do is load levels and such faster (true, I have my Steam file on my SSD vs HDD and it's pretty nice...) but you are going to pay the price.

 

[sub.mesa]

What you have is great. A bigger SSD just means lots of spent (wasted) money. Buy a bigger 4TB harddrive for the needs for the coming years if you like. 128GB SSD will be sufficient to hold your operating system and appliations and maybe a game or two. That's all you need. Harddrives are more suited toward mass storage like downloading stuff and even games with massive datafiles accessed sequentially.

If you'd ask me, it would be pointless spending alot of money on something you don't really need. Buy something else which truly benefits your case.

 

[Pwndenburg]

Thank you all for the input,

I've decided to let sanity rein and purchase a 4 TB drive. With respect to reliability, I don't really NEED to back anything up on this computer as it is simply a gaming toy. Yes, it would be a PITA to redownload all those games; but, I have an Antec 300 case, and I really don't want to stick more than 2 drives in that puppy.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Does it truly matter if an HD has 32 meg or 64 meg of cache?

All other things being equal, they'll probably perform almost identically. Just be aware that all other things are unlikely to be equal . 32 MB cache drives are probably older, and probably have different platter sizes/densities.

Based on my calculations, I'll need ~1.2 TB CURRENTLY

If that means that you currently have 1.2 TB of games/saves/related stuff, that means you'll need ~1.5 TB of SSD storage (since SSDs REALLY like to be <80% full) to fit all of it, and that isn't accounting for any "room to grow". Storing them on an SSD will be cost-prohibitively expensive unless you have A LOT of disposable cash. The 4 TB HDD will serve you well, and your pocketbook will thank you.