Any reason not to get a large SSD?
Discussion
I've been having a look at what is holding back my PC when it's noticeably slower than other people's to load games and such like. It appears the drive is quite slow and that is the bottle neck, so easiest and cheapest thing to do is replace it with a new one. Options are a 2TB HDD, for about £60 a similar sized SSD for £120.
Back in the day I'm sure I remember SSDs not being recommended for large storage/gaming, being used mainly as small boot drives, but in 2025 is there any reason not to get an SSD rather than a HDD? I don't have a huge amount of data, current drive is only 1TB and about 75% full, so 2TB should be fine for a few years.
Back in the day I'm sure I remember SSDs not being recommended for large storage/gaming, being used mainly as small boot drives, but in 2025 is there any reason not to get an SSD rather than a HDD? I don't have a huge amount of data, current drive is only 1TB and about 75% full, so 2TB should be fine for a few years.
simon_harris said:
the problem used to be that you had a defined number of read/writes to an SSD and that using in gaming type systems would burn through those pretty quickly in comparative terms to a HDD. That is a problem long since solved though and they are now commonly used.
The problem wasn't really solved, if anything the write endurance in terms of cycles got worse on the cheaper ranges due to price pressures & the technology for increasing density at those prices.But overall if you're after endurance, then for an otherwise equivalent drive spec the largest ones will last the longest, especially if you don't use the extra space.
Otherwise if it matters buy an enterprise grade one.
I have 4 odd SSDs in mine now - 2 older Sata 2.5" SSD drives, and 2 new 1 and 2 TB NVME SSDs. They all run fine, even the older SATA ones.
My OS is on a fast Samsung 1TB SSD, and my games are on the other larger no-name ones.
If you are moving your OS (and you REALLY should) onto your new purchase, by a Samsung SSD - it comes with free software that performs the image copy for you - makes it a walk in the park. You are going to be utterly amazed at the speed increase.
My OS is on a fast Samsung 1TB SSD, and my games are on the other larger no-name ones.
If you are moving your OS (and you REALLY should) onto your new purchase, by a Samsung SSD - it comes with free software that performs the image copy for you - makes it a walk in the park. You are going to be utterly amazed at the speed increase.
Something else to check, - is the current drive NVMe, or SATA, and how many NVMe slots does your current motherboard (do you have the model) have?
I agree with Griffith4ever to put the OS on the fastest drive is probably the best choice. WD/Sandisk and Crucial also offer bundled imaging software, and I'd very much aim to use a drive from one of these vendors for the OS.
I agree with Griffith4ever to put the OS on the fastest drive is probably the best choice. WD/Sandisk and Crucial also offer bundled imaging software, and I'd very much aim to use a drive from one of these vendors for the OS.
It's going to depend on the spec, some of the fast NVMe drives can only sustain that speed in bursts and are compromised on endurance.
And the OS drive is subject to constant writes so endurance is the key for that one. At a minimum all the operating system logs and stuff that never stop, and usually things like temp files and browser & other caches too unless you make a lot of settings changes to eliminate most of it. You will get through a lot of write cycles without even noticing.
Better to have an OS drive plus a second drive for the other stuff. That's how all my machines are set up including the laptops.
If you want to push the OS drive there's always the option to have striped NVMe for maximum performance and half the wear.
And the OS drive is subject to constant writes so endurance is the key for that one. At a minimum all the operating system logs and stuff that never stop, and usually things like temp files and browser & other caches too unless you make a lot of settings changes to eliminate most of it. You will get through a lot of write cycles without even noticing.
Better to have an OS drive plus a second drive for the other stuff. That's how all my machines are set up including the laptops.
If you want to push the OS drive there's always the option to have striped NVMe for maximum performance and half the wear.
The OS and a few other programs are already on an SSD, the larger HDD is where the games are saved and it's the loading from this which is taking the time. I'll have a look at NVe drives, at some point I expect to upgrade the rest of the machine anyway, but it has become obvious that the HDD is the current bottleneck. Thanks for all the information.
Condi said:
The OS and a few other programs are already on an SSD, the larger HDD is where the games are saved and it's the loading from this which is taking the time. I'll have a look at NVe drives, at some point I expect to upgrade the rest of the machine anyway, but it has become obvious that the HDD is the current bottleneck. Thanks for all the information.
Check out the details of your motherboard, that will tell you if you have any onboard m2 slots.BlueMR2 said:
Check out the details of your motherboard, that will tell you if you have any onboard m2 slots.
Ive ordered a Crucial 2TB M2 PCI5 drive, which will be a massive upgrade today and will be compatible with any new mobo i get in future. Current mobo is only PCI3, but does have a spare M2 slot. SATA SSDs including SATA M2 cards are only around twice as fast as a SATA 3 SSD
If your motherboard doesn't have an NVMe slot and if you do have a spare PCIe slot in the PC, then you could buy a converter card like this one from Amazon
I have a 2TB Crucial P5 Plus NVMe SSD with that card as a games storage drive; it's running at 3200 MB/s, so around 10 times faster than SATA HDDs. The speed will depend on which gen PCIe, and how many lanes are already being used for gaming cards etc
If your motherboard doesn't have an NVMe slot and if you do have a spare PCIe slot in the PC, then you could buy a converter card like this one from Amazon
I have a 2TB Crucial P5 Plus NVMe SSD with that card as a games storage drive; it's running at 3200 MB/s, so around 10 times faster than SATA HDDs. The speed will depend on which gen PCIe, and how many lanes are already being used for gaming cards etc
According to the internet the motherboard supports NVME, so it should just be a case of plugging it in, copying all the files over, and off we go.
Only question is, if everything is installed on the D drive, and the new SSD becomes the E drive, how does the computer know which drive to look at, because everything D/..... won't exist any more. It'll all be E/..... Presumably if I copy everything over directly, they'll copy over the D/... indexing, even though it's not the D drive??
Only question is, if everything is installed on the D drive, and the new SSD becomes the E drive, how does the computer know which drive to look at, because everything D/..... won't exist any more. It'll all be E/..... Presumably if I copy everything over directly, they'll copy over the D/... indexing, even though it's not the D drive??
xeny said:
SSDs in general are much more performant when they're less full, so consider going larger than 2TB rather than starting ~40% full.
If you want to go with 2TB for budget reasons, make sure you get a TLC rather than QLC drive, as this is particularly an issue with them.
This.If you want to go with 2TB for budget reasons, make sure you get a TLC rather than QLC drive, as this is particularly an issue with them.
https://www.xda-developers.com/please-stop-buying-...
LunarOne said:
xeny said:
SSDs in general are much more performant when they're less full, so consider going larger than 2TB rather than starting ~40% full.
If you want to go with 2TB for budget reasons, make sure you get a TLC rather than QLC drive, as this is particularly an issue with them.
This.If you want to go with 2TB for budget reasons, make sure you get a TLC rather than QLC drive, as this is particularly an issue with them.
https://www.xda-developers.com/please-stop-buying-...
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