SSD drive almost full - thinking of going back to hard drive

[ddarko]

So I've had a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro as my boot drive for a couple years now. I've been running it with 10% overprovisioned and it's been hovering around half full for a while now. Yesterday, after installing GTA 5 and Titanfall, there's now less than 5GB of free space left. This appears to have seriously degraded the performance of the drive - my browser started hanging while opening simple web pages and a shutdown was clocking in at 5 minutes and counting before I finally pulled the plug (I know, not the best idea to cut the power on an SSD but I lost patience). There's not a lot more I can do to clear space on the drive so it seems like I need a bigger boot drive. I picked up a Crucial MX200 500GB SSD but it's sitting unopened on my desk because I remembered I still have a working Western Digital 640GB Black hard drive, which was my boot drive before I moved over to SSD. I am now thinking of going back to the WD Black and returning the Crucial.

My thought is I don't really want to spend money on a new SATA SSD now. The 500GB Crucial is cheap but it's still $200, money that I'm really reluctant to spend because it's solely because my current SSD ran out of space. There's no other tangible benefit to the change like a performance boost - if anything, I'd probably take a step back by going from a 840 Pro to an MX200, though it's arguable whether I'd notice.

Also, it seems like we're on the cusp of the transition to PCIe based drives and I'm hesitating spending money on another SATA SSD, especially one whose capacity may be insufficient in the near future as new games continue the trend of requiring 50GB+ of install space. The new 500GB drive is already going to be 50% full the moment it's installed. 1TB is a better future-proof size but they're still too expensive for my taste. On the other hand, the 640GB WD Black is long since paid for and its capacity should be sufficient long enough till either 1TB SSD drives become affordable or for PCIe drives to become more mainstream.

My main concern is the performance impact of going back to a hard drive. I keep my computer on most of time so shortened boot times don't really matter much to me. I don't remember being wowed by OS speed improvements when I moved to SSD - things may well have been faster but my perception of any speed boost was minimal. Are there other factors or considerations I'm missing?

 

[ronbo613]

Why don't you keep your operating system and critical programs on your SSD, put the games on the Black HD and see how it flies?

 

[corkyg]

Why don't you keep your operating system and critical programs on your SSD, put the games on the Black HD and see how it flies?

This FTW!

 

[chubbyfatazn]

1TB is a better future-proof size but they're still too expensive for my taste.

How much are you willing to spend? Newegg has the 960GB Crucial M500 on sale for $285 right now, cheapest price I've ever seen it (and a 1TB-class SSD). Might not bench as fast as your 840 Pro, but I'm hecka satisfied with my 480GB M500 I paid $140 for.

Otherwise, seconding what ronbo613 said.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-cables-_-na-_-na&Item=N82E16820148696&cm_sp=

 

[ddarko]

Don't have a SATA port to spare. Freeing one up could be done but it would be a pain. Plus, I like having applications and the OS on the same drive - there always seems to be a program that still expects and requires to be installed on the same drive as the OS. I'd rather just keep everything together instead of splitting OS and applications. Also it's more convenient for imaging and cloning purposes.

$285 is a great price for a 1TB SSD - the cheapest 1TB SSD at the Microcenter I went to was a Crucial BX100 for $380. That makes 1TB SSD a much more viable option but it's still more than I'd like to spend, especially when the alternative I'm considering is free and my general hesitation about investing in any SATA SSD now. But thanks for the heads up about the price. I am reluctant to buy from Newegg though so I'd have to consider whether the price is too attractive to pass up.

 

[ddarko]

OK, reality check. I cloned my SSD drive to the WD Black drive and just fired it up. It is S-L-O-W. Specifically, every action of the OS has a lag or pause before it starts. Obviously, I have completely become normalized to the snappiness that SSD brings to everyday OS activity and forgotten what an improvement it was versus hard drives. I'd probably become adjusted to hard drives eventually so that it didn't feel so lethargic but I'm not sure if I could tolerate how long that would take. I'm going to bite the bullet and install the Crucial SSD. Goodbye to the WD Black - this blast from the past was educational but back to the drawer it will go.

 

[MongGrel]

This FTW!

Yep, what a lot of people have been doing for a long time now.

I have a couple SSD's in RAID for the OS and an old Hardware Raid array with 4X1 Tb's WD RE3's from when they first became popular for storage.

 

[ddarko]

But having apps and programs installed on hard drives isn't an issue? I would think faster load times would be missing with games if the game was running off hard drives. Or is it you overcome that by running the hard drives in RAID?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

But having apps and programs installed on hard drives isn't an issue? I would think faster load times would be missing with games if the game was running off hard drives. Or is it you overcome that by running the hard drives in RAID?

Running a game off of an SSD makes it load faster, but doesn't usually increase framerate or otherwise effect gameplay. With game downloads topping 40GB now, that's a tradeoff most cost-conscious gamers will take.

You'd be right about reverting to HDD for space reasons, except that it's trivially easy to install both and have an almost-best-of-both-worlds scenario.

 

[Charlie98]

You can post your 840Pro for sale here in the FS/FT forum and recover a bit of your money... It's a decent drive.

 

[ronbo613]

I have my OS and everything except games on an SSD. I had all my games on a 1TB WD RE4, they ran fine. I put one game, a resource sucking flight sim; DCS World, on the SSD to see what would happen and I could not see any real difference. Maybe it loaded a second or two faster, I didn't notice. I got a new SSD and put all my games on the old SSD and I really don't see any significant difference from when they were on the spinner.

I agree with having the OS and all my programs on the SSD, I think that makes a real difference. I'm not a huge gamer, but I think that GPU, CPU and RAM all have more of an impact on games(at least the ones I have) than the storage component.

 

[MongGrel]

Nice to see somone else using RE's I guess, I do not see them even mentioned that often.

Surprised me I even saw the RE3's still for sale even the other day, stock off the egg, I thought they would have been phased out by now.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Same here OS on 2 SSD'S in Raid, then my games on a separate HDD, never had one issue. Don't put stuff on my OS, slow it down if i do............

 

[hhhd1]

The old Samsung 840 pro 256gb should sell for around 100 USD.

 

[Ranulf]

I put most of my games on SSDs these days but it depends on the game and how often I play it. MMOs and games that load levels/assets etc. on the fly will be far far faster on an ssd. Other games put on a HD and just wait the extra 30-60s (my general average) for it to load.

On a fresh game start, WoW went from 45s load times on a HD to 10s on average on an ssd, even in a crowded city.

So in the end, you just have to think about managing your data storage carefully.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Somehow, what I'll hint at here is supposed to be "out of fashion," but I've so far found it great for keeping game programs (and user data) off the boot SSD :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...93&cm_re=patriot_blaze-_-20-220-893-_-Product

Plus -- either Intel ISRT or:

http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/index.html

Plus:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149397&cm_re=2TB_HDD-_-22-149-397-_-Product

To clarify for the last link, any decent HDD of a chosen size will do fine. Further, it doesn't have to be an SATA-III drive: you won't lose much if you want to use something like an old 1TB Samsung F3.

You simply begin installing additional programs and games on the HDD after your boot SSD is about half full.

I just recently did this with a 256GB 840 EVO boot disk, a Patriot Blaze 60GB and a 500GB WD Blue 2.5" laptop drive. All the games are on the lappie drive.

After you've loaded up this or that game once, it mostly remains in the cache SSD and it's lightning fast and responsive.

The Romex software has so far proven -- with a 3-PC license, and on a laptop and two desktop systems -- to be totally reliable, flawless, flexibly configurable. I believe the SSD-caching -- called "L2" caching in the software -- can then be further cached in RAM, since the software is also an answer to Samsung RAPID for non-Samsung SSDs. I suppose you're going to want 16GB of RAM, which also makes RAPID come back with some pretty extreme bench results.

So. You get to "fall back" to an HDD, but you get 80% of SSD speed by throwing the software and the little $40 60GB SSD into the mix.

Even a little 2.5" laptop drive seems to have "Warp drive" speed -- according to the Star-Trek feature-of-fiction.

 

[ArisVer]

Going back to an HDD after an SSD is a big step backwards. While I have done that for 2 months on my main rig, I was glad I went back to the SSD. Keep in mind that if you use the sleep function the longer startup issue is fixed. Accessing anything is slower but still works....just slower. Currently I use my notebook for almost everything and it's on a HDD. It does not bother me much and I got used to it.
If I were you I would free a SATA port and use a 2 disk approach as most here suggested.

 

[looper]

Same here OS on 2 SSD'S in Raid, then my games on a separate HDD, never had one issue. Don't put stuff on my OS, slow it down if i do............

PhIlLy ChEeSe....

Oops, sorry... off-topic.... BUT, your i7-3930k (stock 3.2GHz) you have running at 5.4 GHz? Huh?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Somehow, what I'll hint at here is supposed to be "out of fashion," but I've so far found it great for keeping game programs (and user data) off the boot SSD . . .

Well, nobody commented. I'll only emphasize that I have two desktops and laptop running flawlessly with the two-level caching -- now for 10 months. The OP has a 640GB HDD. Probably $40 for the 60GB SSD and $30 for software which -- with the drive as well -- can be reallocated to other hardware down the road.

For games, I think it's a great solution. Also, I believe you can use a larger SSD as a cache-drive, but that's a bigger outlay. On the positive side, such a larger drive could still be used, even as a boot-system disk later on.

About the only thing I'd noticed about any of my small SSDs: One of them was recording a SMART temperature of 140C after a firmware update. But the drive was as cool as a drink from the kitchen sink. It ran flawlessly, and still does. I think it was the Pyro, with the SandForce controller. The Blaze has a different controller -- called "Phison" or something.

So no failures with that sort of usage. Your usage patterns, type of software . . . office versus rendering versus gaming -- would mean YMMV. It's of least value to store media that are read only ever so often with a wide variation in numbers of unique files. HDDs just consume more power, as a rule, but they're more than adequate for a lot of things.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Somehow, what I'll hint at here is supposed to be "out of fashion," but I've so far found it great for keeping game programs (and user data) off the boot SSD :

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with caching, but 1) extra SATA device. 2) Nerds like controlling things.

I am strongly considering switching to all-SSD on my main box.

 

[Brado78]

If I had to go back a step. I would at LEAST get an SSHD. they come in 4TB models, granted not as fast as an SSD but a hell of a lot snappier than a HDD.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Take off the 10% over provision. You don't need it unless you're doing super write heavy stuff everyday. That's ~25GB back right there.

 

[nk215]

Use junction to move some folders in your games over the HHD. You don't have to move the entire game over to the HHD if you won't want to. That way you can still install everything on the SSD and move things over to the HHD when needed.

 

[JimKiler]

Not that anyone asked me but i still use HDD's for all my games but one and I never felt like the load time was unbearable to painful.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Not that anyone asked me but i still use HDD's for all my games but one and I never felt like the load time was unbearable to painful.

This is also true.

I use SteamMover to swap them back and forth, but all but three currently reside on the HD.