FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

Is an HD really worth it?

Post Date: 2022-02-20
 Post Reply Post Reply
Author
  Topic Search Topic Search  Topic Options Topic Options
Threetall View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Aug 2015
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 47 		  Quote Threetall Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Is an HD really worth it?
    Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 5:04am
Get a large SSD and why bother with the HD? Probably a topic thats been beat to death. But I'm old school and used to HD's.
Back to Top
bprat22 View Drop Down
DS ELITE
DS ELITE

DigitalStorm East -- (Unofficially!)
Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 08 Jun 2011
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 20391 		  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 5:28am
Hi Threetall,,,,    The only reason to still use an HDD instead of SSD is the price per GB, or putting your old one in a new rig.  A 4TB HDD is cheaper than a 1TB SSD.  But you sacrifice speed. 

Big%20Smile
Back to Top
Threetall View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 26 Aug 2015
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 47 		  Quote Threetall Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 7:56am
Yeah I get that. But I am truly obsessed with keeping a clean and organized drive. I dont know if I need that HD. But it seems to off for me to build a machine without one.
Back to Top
ealderson View Drop Down
Groupie
Groupie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 12 Feb 2021
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 142 		  Quote ealderson Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 8:27am
I went all SSD in mine. I have since had to add an additional SSD since I was running low on space so am now up to 4 drives (2 x M.2 PCIe 4.0 and 2 x 2.5" SATA). It seemed like a crime to add a spinning disk, but it is certainly more cost effective for bulk storage (backups, etc.).
Back to Top
bprat22 View Drop Down
DS ELITE
DS ELITE

DigitalStorm East -- (Unofficially!)
Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 08 Jun 2011
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 20391 		  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 8:55am
Originally posted by Threetall

Yeah I get that. But I am truly obsessed with keeping a clean and organized drive. I dont know if I need that HD. But it seems to off for me to build a machine without one.



I get it.  My last rig from DS had NO optical drive installed.  That also seemed just not right after all these decades.  I do have an external DVD for the one or two programs a year on CD.   Things are a-changing. 

Have fun.  Big%20Smile
Back to Top
Onkel_Ken View Drop Down
DS Veteran
DS Veteran

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 17 Dec 2008
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2961 		  Quote Onkel_Ken Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 2:27pm
Talking about HDs, I have a 500GB 980 SSD & a 1TB 970 SSD but took the lazy route and hooked up an old USB 1TB HD to the back that I had loaded with music & documents over the years. Don't need a lot of speed to listen to music or read old computer/electronic manuals.

The 500GB just has the OS and a few daily play games while the 1TB 970 has my main game library.

I should be moving the disks over from my old 12 year Digital Storm beast but it still games good with a OC 3Ghz i920 and an original Titan GPU. Hate to strip parts from a system that has been so good to me over the years.

I am thinking about getting a crazy big HD and put it in the new system for all the junk and reference file one collects over the years.   
Velox X/AMD 5900X/MSI X570 Pro Carbon MB/32GB DDDR 3600 DSPS/850W PS/500GB Samsung 980 Pro/1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus/500 GB HDD/Sound Blaster AE-7/EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080 10GB/Liquid CPU cooler AIO/
Back to Top
hoserator View Drop Down
DS Veteran
DS Veteran

We don't need no stinking "Avatars" !
Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 08 Oct 2014
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 7966 		  Quote hoserator Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 20 Feb 2022 at 11:26pm
I have 2x4TB HDDs in raid 1 for all my documents and photographs. Everything else is on SSDs. Also an external 8TB for backups which I disconnect from the system after the backups are done.

I have noticed that the NVMEs run on the hot side of the other storage systems. Right now, the original primary (512GB 850 PRO) is 29C, Secondary (512 GB 860 PRO) is 33C, new primary (1TB 970 PRO) is 48C and the 2HDDS (WD 4TB) are 40C.
Back to Top
Gunlord View Drop Down
Groupie
Groupie

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 187 		  Quote Gunlord Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 21 Feb 2022 at 11:12am
My own personal experience, which I hope might be useful for you, is that it's all about first, your budget, and second, your storage vs. speed needs.

In general, I absolutely wouldn't go with an HD for the computer's main or startup drive. Being able to turn it on in like 10 seconds flat is just too convenient. But after that, for a secondary drive, it depends on how important speed is for the kind of work you plan to do, compared to how much stuff you want to keep. All things being equal, as far as I know a solid state drive is always better than a HD cause theyre so much faster and more reliable. But what isn't equal is money, as folks above have mentioned, SSDs are about 4X more expensive per unit of storage than HDs.

So if you plan on playing games, especially on a cloud, that need extremely fast data access times, go with SSDs. For instance, Total War Warhammer 3, which I'm playing a lot of, would take like an hour just to start up on an HD, lol. And since it's on Steam, what I do is download the game when I'm playing it a lot, and after I've beat it, uninstall it to free up room for a new game. If I ever get back to it I can uninstall a game I havent played in a while and re-download it again, even though that takes a bit of time.

On the other hand, if you're working with many, many files, or just large ones, that don't need to load super fast, a hard drive might be better. For instance, if you have like 400 games on steam that are only 100 MB each (compared to Total War Warhammer, which is 1 game of about 120GB of data), it may be more convenient to have the extra storage space so you don't have to constantly uninstall games to free up space, as it's not like a pixel game that could run on Super Nintendo or Game Boy (a la Curse of the Moon or Shovel Knight) is going to load noticeably faster with a SSD than a HD.

With my most recent machine, I got the best SSD I could (the firecuda) to make startup as fast as possible, but my main drive is an HD because most of the pictures and movies I have don't need super speeds. Aside from that, I got one more SSD super cheap that's only 240 GB, because it was only about 50 dollars or so (I paid about as much for gas today) which is just large enough to fit Total War Warhammer and Death Stranding--when I'm done with one game I'll uninstall it and put on the other.


Edited by Gunlord - 21 Feb 2022 at 11:14am
Back to Top
Onkel_Ken View Drop Down
DS Veteran
DS Veteran

Email address used to purchase matched with forums account email.

Joined: 17 Dec 2008
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 2961 		  Quote Onkel_Ken Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 21 Feb 2022 at 1:10pm
Velox X/AMD 5900X/MSI X570 Pro Carbon MB/32GB DDDR 3600 DSPS/850W PS/500GB Samsung 980 Pro/1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus/500 GB HDD/Sound Blaster AE-7/EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080 10GB/Liquid CPU cooler AIO/
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down



This page was generated in 4.882813E-02 seconds.