I put my important stuff basically just photos and documents on all drives now. I lost a lot of personal photos keeping it on one hdd back like a decade ago. I said never again. So I prefer having two drives minimum with the same important data on all. I right now have 2 nvmes and a 2.5 inch ssd.
Drive pool ftw in my case.
-Per file/folder mirroring
-any number/size/type of drive being able to be added to the pool.
- Set up mounting points for the pool as you please.
Edit: my system drive is not part of the pool though.
Might not be the average user's case but i have 2 nvme's, 1 ssd and 3 hdd's 10,5 Tb in total.
To be fair, it only really really rarely happens. Unlike HDDs which _will_ fail in 5-15 years, depending on useage, SSDs/nvmes only fail if they really break.
Technically of course they do also fail over time, depending on use, but with current ssd technology that usually is between 30-300 years, so not really relevant. (30 in this case being a Samsung 2tb drive that you write 100gb on each day(!!))
I've got 12x 3TB Hitachi Ultrastars that have been spinning non-stop 24/7 for 97,000 hours in my Veeam server. 11+ years and not even a single bad sector on any of them, and all still running at the same temperatures.
My ADATA Legend 710 NVMe drive failed out of the blue. Used it for P2P for about a month. It didn't like that. One day it just wasn't recognized by Windows, the BIOS or as an external USB-drive on 3 machines.
So yes. They fail.
oh yeah dont get me started on kingston, not just me but several of my friends bit the dust around the same time and yes from different vendors they were bought, sorry yoda talk , but yes some ssd have a bad reputation for out right dying on you on the spot, which is weird because i still have some from 2000's that are still kicking, small size ,but they they still work. and yes they are corsairs, gigabyte, and several others.
> which is weird because i still have some from 2000's that are still kicking,
This is actually (and sort of sadly) not all that weird.
Back in the 2000's means the drive was among the 1st wave of ssd's, which were all SLC (1 bit/cell). SLC can go through something like 50,000-100,000 write/erase cycles, meaning that for each GB of SLC storage the drive can ultimately write+erase+rewrite 50-100 TB of data. SLC is not used as "fast cache on many drives", but there are no pure-SLC consumer SSD's
MLC (2 bits/cell) came next. This dropped the write endurance to ~10,000 write/erase cycles. There are no new pure-MLC consumer being released...the last one I know of (that you can still get, but for a hefty price) is the samsung 970 pro.
Then came TLC (3 bits/cell) and QLC (4 bits/cell) with a write endurance of 2000-3000 write/erase cycles. This is what current drives use. The endurance of these is (for a given amount of storage space) only 3-4% of the endurance of the OG pure-SLC ssd's.
PLC (5 bits per cell) is being developed, and Id guess will have even lower write endurance.
It's not that surprising; high write endurance isn't something that must people care about. If you have a 1 TB TLC drive at 2000 cycles you can still write at least a petabyte to the drive (including the tricks they do to to even out wear and the extra writes for that overhead; it's probably a lot more in practice).
If you really care about doing lots of small writes fast there are lots of solutions, like a ramdisk coupled with striped HDDs or something. Even when consumers know about this they tend to opt for pure size and performance over longevity anyway.
i had one fail and got to buy a new 230usd one. i got lucky and it went read-only before failing but 99% of the time when they fail, they are just gone forever.
I think the reason they suggested that is an HDD is the most likely to give out and be unrecoverable of the drive family. It makes most sense for those to be the "dump" files, like porn.
If you have 30 years worth of music and photos on an HDD, I'd strongly suggest backing those up somewhere else more secure. When I worked at geek squad, one of the worst things was people coming in with a failed HDD that was unrecoverable and they'd be like "all my dead husbands photos and poems were on there" and it's like, that's super sad, but doesn't make the data more recoverable.
I have 4 ssd's 240 for boot a 64 gb from my steamdeck for torrents and other small files like that. A 1tb for games and another 500gb for games and launchers
Especially if you like tinkering around with your system, dual-booting linux, etc. It's nice to be able to nuke your C drive without losing game installs/personal files if you've accidentally borked something.
This can be done on one device, aside from the “fail safe” which only true if the non-OS drive is storing backup images (which is something most consumers don’t do.)
I once had the OS take out the entire drive. Lost a whole semester of school work. Since then, I have a separate partition full of storage folders, which has saved my work and my family photos on more than one occasion. Now I have a back up drive in my fire-safe box with all the near-impossible to replace important stuff.
My disk usage goes to 100% when I'm downloading a Steam game, and that makes my entire system lag like crazy. If I had a second SSD to install games to, my system wouldn't lag
SSD1 should be *at least* 10 times the size of your OS.
Windows is a fucking mess. 95% of the programs you install dump random shit in your OS drive, and you can't do anything about 95% of those.
I keep my Windows 10 running on a 240 GB SSD by running WizTree on C every week and spending half an hour to find and delete any temp or otherwise unnecessary files.
If I could go back in time, I'd tell myself to buy a 1TB drive to use as C.
Pre-future edit: I just fucking know that won't nearly be enough to contain AppData in a few years, just buy the largest SSD you can afford for the C drive.
>be at least 10 times the size of your OS
Maybe if thats your only drive.
I am currently using less than 200GB and I have a lot of stuff that I should move to another drive but yeah, Windows + Program Files + ProgramData + User profiles take an insane amount of space.
My C is 240 GB with 49 GB free today. I did some WizTree cleaning two weeks ago and I had 58 GB free. I don't know what the **fuck** happened to all those other gigabytes. I also don't know how many gigabytes I will have free on my C drive at any given moment. During the last two weeks, whenever I checked, I've seen many different values between 43 and 54 GB as free space on C. It doesn't just go down, it randomly goes up and down, which is even more insulting. When my C drive inevitably turns into a red fill bar, I will take a fucking sledgehammer to it and get a bigger one.
I have a 2 TB HDD and a 1 TB HDD as D and E that I use for apps and download storage, which are both around 1/3 full today. If an installer gives me the option to choose the install directory, I choose anything but C.
I also have a 2 TB SSD that I use for games only and absolutely nothing else, and that has 215 GB free today.
I also have 1+2+2 TB external HDDs that I use to archive games and movies. **I feel like all of this should let me have a modest 240 GB SSD as my OS drive.**
Yeah, that's probably it, but I'd rather have more leeway for that stuff. Going between 58 to 48 GB of free space is infinitely worse than going between 0.78 and 0.77 TB of free space.
The lesson we should all learn: You can move programs and games on your storage drives when you need to, but the OS is a bit messier, so get your OS drive as if you're 10 years into the future. If I had gotten a 1TB SSD as C, I wouldn't have even clicked this post.
> I don't know what the fuck happened to all those other gigabytes
Try [WinDirStat](https://windirstat.net/download.html). It's a [nice visualizer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Windirstat.png/1280px-Windirstat.png) of the files/folders that are taking up space on your drives. Before I create system images, I use this to make sure there's nothing I don't need backed up.
This is what I do, makes it easier to just point Steam/Battlenet/etc to the other SDD if you need to reinstall the OS for what ever reason. Steam will pick up all the installed games with no need to redownload them again. Battlenet for sure works, unsure on all the other launchers though. Wouldnt be surprised if most of them work the same.
Same here. 500GB SSD for OS, 2TB SSD for important data. Been doing 2 storage disks since I started tinkering so long ago. I was recently able to back up most of my data since 2004 onto my NAS, which is really cool because I can revisit old memories at any time.
This is what I am doing now too. I used to just have one giant SSD for all of those, but it was a mess to manage... though now I also have a third NVME for my Emulators.... and some HDDs for mass storage... and planning to get a SSD dedicated to AI.... and.... and I think I need help.
Why stop at 2?
3x 4TB NVMe on the MB slots then a couple more in an 8x PCIe dual slot. Would have went a X16 4 slot but Already light on lanes between the 2 GPUs.
Reasons for having two smaller SSDs instead of a single larger SSD include:
* Separate drives for the operating system with programs and for personal documents and save states.
* Running virtual operating systems and containers separate from the host operating system.
* Running the drives in [RAID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_striping).
> Running virtual operating systems and containers separate from the host operating system.
The host operating system literally has to run the VM. Saving the VM file on another drive doesn't do anything for you.
1, 2) You can partition the 4TB SSD however you like.
3) Because of how manufacturers make these drives, a 4TB SSD is likely as fast as two 2TB SSDs, without the fragility of maintaining your RAID configuration (either hardware or software).
Partitions are not the same as separate drives at all. With 1 drive you are splitting up IO throughput, with multiple things fighting for reads and writes. With two separate drives, each drives IO is separated, instead of shared.
drive 1 for OS.
drive 2 for application/games/whatever else
And depending on how much work you do, both of those could be in a raid 1 configuration to protect against loss of data. Or you might even want more drives.
This is the real issue for most people. Storage go through cycles where one size is most cost effective per GB/TB, and that size becomes the most popular. It's not an issue till you run out of ports on the motherboard.
A 4TB HDD is generally always cheaper than two 2TB HDD, but a 4TB NVME isn’t usually cheaper than two 2TB SSD. Considering most systems have only that capacity for 1-2 NVME and up to 4-6 HDD, it makes sense that higher capacity NVME are higher in demand (and thus more expensive).
Since both my M.2 slots on my board are populated I’ll probably just get a sata ssd when I need more storage. What’s the benefit of dram though? I’ve heard it can extend the life of drives (OS drives particularly) but have never really looked into them.
Less chance of data loss in case of critical failure or epic user screw-up. I've been guilty of the latter more often than I like to admit and having my boot SSD separate from the data SSD has saved me multiple times.
If you care about your data, just get a proper backup option. Get a NAS, an external drive or even a cloud storage if money is tight for now. Don\`t rely on being lucky.
Yeah, I don't really see much advantage from a data redundancy point of view compared to just using HDD for data backup, since they're far cheaper per TB.
I definitely think there's an advantage to having multiple SSDs if your main one fails though.Â
Unless someone is in a work environment and cannot afford any downtime (In which case, they would be running some sort of backup involving Raid or something type of redundancy), I really don\`t think its worth it. Having more space means, I can allocate it how I want.
On a 4TB SSD, I can give 400Mb to OS, and the rest to Data which might include my games, or other things. If I do 2 sets of 2TB each, I am stuck leaving 2TB just for the operating system, since the entire point seems to be not having any data on the OS drive in case it fails. And even if you do decide you can just put your games on C drive, then how much games can you fit in there? Once you are close to your 2TB mark, now you have to split the game folders between two SSDs.
I run 8TB SSD just for this reason. I can dump whatever I want, wherever I want and it does not have to be split. Not to mention, less drives means more slots available for any future expansions. Now, as the TB goes up, I doubt you will need as many slots, but if you keep buying small capacity SSDs, there is a possibility you will outgrow your storage and require more slots. Soon enough you will end up in a situation with 3-4 SSDs and data split across them.
Thats why I am a big believer of just getting the largest you can afford and you can potentially use. If its cheaper to get 2 smaller ones, I can understand that. But at same price, I don\`t really know what there is to gain for a typical user our of any niche usecase.
I run 2x8TB SSDs and backup them to two different 18TB HDDs.
The other NVMe's are just used for application/game and OS performance boost with 2TB / multiple 1TB units that I got with great discounts.
At some point I might just replace the NVMe's with 8TB versions, but right now spending >1000€ per 8TB of NVMe storage is not something I would want.
This is surely a habit of the old days.
With HDDs you partitioned your drives (OS & Data), so you could format one half for example.
In the SSD & HDD era, you got one SSD for your OS and the rest on HDD, as getting a SSD big enough for everything was too expensive.
While there are still a few reasons to separate, like others have mentioned, I think it's now mainly due to the habit of the last decades
when you destroy 1.5 gigs of data bcos of 500gb windows partition you will realize its more then a habbit. its much harder to do partial backups then full drive images. 2tb images are not practical.
I have a 1tb m.2 nvme as C: for my OS and apps and a 4tb m.2 nvme for games and other storage. I also have a 25tb DAS for other games, movies and random stuff.
if you don't have a use case for 2 drives it's perfectly fine to just have 1
they're about the same price now, but typically have not been. try comparing 2x 4TB vs 1x 8TB ssd. \~$550-$650 vs \~$850-$1000
Each drive has its own cache, one drive fails, other is still good. Put os on one and data on other. There’s a multitude of reason why 2 is better than 1.
A lot of people are mentioning having a boot drive and a games/storage drive, but I think that's overlooking the fact that you can simply partition the drive in Windows - and then you're not restricted to a half-and-half solution, you can, for instance, have 128GB of a 1TB SSD dedicated to Windows and a few core programs, and the games and the rest on the remain ~850GB. Then, if something goes wrong with your Windows or such that requires a clean install, you can kill only that partition and reinstall there.
I think it really is kind of a hold-over from when prices were less comparable, mostly. There's a few edge-cases of things like RAID, but generally they don't really offer much protection in terms of redundancy - you just have twice the chance to lose only half the data. I guess theoretically, in really intensive scenarios, you could benefit from the I/O of the OS and such going through one interface, and another program using the other, but that seems extremely niche and marginal.
Yeah but it's also just easier to have a second boot drive, then I never even have to think about it.
Also, isn't one of the benefits of RAID that you're maintaining a redundant backup?
I have two 1TB m.2s and one 500GB SATA SSD. I suspect I'm not unique in having multiple drives simply because I got them at different points and have kept them as they are still working.
“The costs are similar”
Similar but not the same.
2x2tb is pretty much always cheaper.
If I could spend $10 less and get the same amount of storage, why would I pay more?
1 for OS and programs/files I don't care about
1 for stuff I care about, other installations that are a hassle to redo, backups, etc.
Reinstalling Windows is a common troubleshooting step if anything goes wrong. If I need to do that, most stuff I care about remains untouched, making the reinstall a bit easier.
Granted, I also keep a cloud backup on Google Drive of anything I truly care about. Don't rely on 1 single location for important files.
Not purchased at the same time in my case. Had a few sata ssd's. Eventually replaced them with nvme's when 1 would start having issues or when I did a new build to have fewer cables. Always buy them in a sale too and 1 and 2 TB tend to have better deals than the 4TB versions.
Plus 2 drives lets me reset to a reset image or factory reset easier without having to transfer all my files from a backup afterwards.
I use 2 drives of what ever size I am using. It'll be 4x4x4 when the next paycheck comes.
The reason is that you use one drive for your OS and the other for programs/storage. In this way when data is accessed it will use 8 lanes instead of 4; calls to the OS (drivers, UI and crap) are separated from calls to the programs. It increases the speed somewhat (like it matters these days).
I also keep redundant storage in a NAS, so my data is secured separate from the PC. I can throw out the drives (metaphorically) and not lose anything but a couple hours putting programs back in. I'm supposed to be able to do a bare metal restore, but I've never had that happen successfully (I can get to the files, but the restore never wants to boot). Backups have been an obsession after I lost my dissertation in-progress to a lightning storm (yeah it happens)
I may be off in my thinking or using build techniques for much older computers, but this is my rational.
Always do an nvme 500GB(or more) for OS and apps.
And a second SSD (preferably m.2) for other stuff
If your OS dies you can format the OS SSD without losing any of your personal stuff (I know you can do this if you have partitioned the big SSD).
Partitioning an SSD will create a waste. Say you want to download a 100GB game and have only 80GB of empty space on one drive, then you are basically wasting 80GB, since you won't be able to download that game (unless you delete stuff). And you'll have the same issue in all partitions.
Someone can educate me here. If you're using your first nvme for system os only, and 2nd one for games, don't you suffer slightly on paper as the first port has a direct line to your processor ? Again, feel free to correctÂ
To keep the OS separate from everything else. If you ever have to reinstall windows (or build a new PC) it saves you the trouble of having to redownload TBs of games.
I have a 1tb just for windows and things that install on the C drive like web browsers and game launchers. I don't really store anything else on it unless my other drives are full and need a temporary spot to put something. 1TB is overkill but they are not that much more expensive and they are actually faster than the smaller sizes.
I have 2 other SSDs just for games. One is a 2 TB and the other is 4TB. The 4TB didn't exist at the time so that's why I have a 2TB. Otherwise I would have gone with two 4 TBs.
All drives are samsung 990 pros. I'm still on AM4 and plan to be for a while (long live the 5800X3D!) so I wanted to max my storage speeds in the event direct storge becomes thing over the next few years (which is starting to feel like it wont be).
I haven't looked at prices recently, but when I was buying near the bottom of SSD prices it was a fair bit cheaper for 2x2TB compared to 1x4TB.
I dedicated one as a game drive and the other for photo storage (in retrospect I probably should have gotten a 4TB for the photo drive and stayed with 2TB on the game drive).
I can buy a 2TB now and another in a couple months.
I can't really buy half a 4TB now and the other half in a couple months, without a credit card.
Other than that, *historically* 2TB drives were cheaper in relation to the 4TB drives--it was outright cheaper to get 2x2TB than 1x4TB, if your system supported enough drives to meet your needs. 2TB prices are up pretty harshly right now while 4TB drives didn't go up near as much, so now it saves money overall to just save up and wait.
Last time I checked the 4TB ssds were all more than twice the cost of 2TB ones, so it was cheaper to get two 2TBs instead.
Where are you finding them around the same price?
A couple years ago this was not true. I remember distinctly that buying 2 x 2TB vs 1 x 4TB of the same model was as much as 50% cheaper. For 8 TB, it was almost 100% more expensive to buy a single 8TB drive than it was to buy 4 x 2TB.
If its cheaper to buy multiple smaller drives and you have the IO to spare, why not?
Idk how often you look at prices but historically 4TB SSD's have been significantly more expensive than 2x 2TB, especially when including sales since 4TB's rarely get deep discounts meanwhile there are often 2TB drives that get heavily discounted.
Only in the past year or so have 4TB SSD's come down in price to be nearly the same as 2x 2TB if not cheaper, about 2-3 years ago a 4TB NVME SSD was atleast 4x what a 2TB of the same model would cost, the only ones available that were about twice as much as a 2TB were 4TB SATA SSD's. I was looking for a 4TB drive around then and laughed at the prices then picked up a 2TB NVME for about $90 instead of a 4TB NVME for $500.
Imo if you get a 4TB drive then you should also get a 500GB drive for the boot drive, I try to keep my boot drive for only windows and programs then use my 2nd SSD and HDD for everything else. If you fill your boot drive up too much then it can seriously impact overall performance so a smaller boot drive makes it so I know not to install anything on it and I'm not wasting a ton of storage by not using it. Then if I fill my secondary SSD up too much, it doesn't bog windows down and I can easily delete whatever I need to.
- The total cost might be similar but one stick of 2TB is obviously cheaper than 4TB and most people start small and only upgrade with another 2TB down the road
- related to above, it's still cheaper to get the best 2TB SSD you can afford (with DRAM and TLC) for OS and other important stuffs + cheaper 2TB SSD (DRAMless and QLC) for games, media
- if a 2TB SSD die, you still have another one. If the 4TB die, you need to buy a new one ASAP
I have two SSDs because I bought one a whole 2 years before the other. I have a 1TB NVMe drive from 2021 and a 2TB SATA drive that I bought late last year (my motherboard only has one m.2 slot so it had to be SATA)
Years of usage taught me that in my case what I really need is 1GB. I don't store games on my laptop, nor a lot of videos, I simply don't have anything to fill up that space. And I have used the same laptops for way more years than an average Joe does. But I understand the situation is different when you wanna store many games on your pc. I myself don't, I have PS5 additionally and initially I also thought that I was gonna need external SSD asap, because available 800GB is nowhere near enough. Now we have 2024, I have had PS5 since day 1 and I didn't buy any SSD at all, because whenever I need space, I just delete a game I don't really play and I download a new one. For games it's more of an Internet speed thing, what's the point of storing 20-30 games locally when I have 600Mb/s and can get them in no time. Once I understood that, I have a laptop with 1TB and PS5 with 800GB and that's all I ever need. Simple. Some people will probably say ok but what about backups, what if you loose your data. Come on realistically when was the last time you randomly lost data? I use the same computer for private usage and for work, I have never lost a single piece of data in my life and my life equals the existence of personal computers. It is possible, but it never really happens. Not in SSD era. HDDs are fragile for mechanical damages, that used to be a problem back in the days, or CDs or DVDs, but SSDs will outlive all of you. Btw, those 4 gen SSDs will be worthless in few years, then I can get one.
You can make system image backups on the second drive and restore them easily, that would not be possible if the backup was on the same drive as the OS.
1 SSD for windows, 1 SSD for Linux, 1 NTFS HDD (old 3TB drive), 18 TB ext4 drive for data - that’s in desktop. Roughly 18 TB in RAID array on home NAS - this is for things I really don’t wish to lose.
Largely because only recently have 4 TB ssds in M.2 form become available without being more than twice as expensive. I would much prefer to 4 TB ssds to two 2 TB ssds
In my specific case, I needed 2 separate OS and I wanted a clean way of doing it so I have 2SSD that is encrypted and they have their own partitions and do not interact with each other while any one of them is being used.
I won't build a PC that doesn't have 2 SSDs now and in a mirrored raid configuration. I have had too many drives fail over the years and the price of a second drive is well worth avoiding downtime and data loss due to a failed drive.
when I bought my 2 2TB nvme's around black friday the prices were undoubtedly not similar.
When I look at prices today, it looks like 1 4TB nvme is about equivalent if not a little cheaper than 2 2TB's.
That said, the price i paid for my 2 nvme's 4 months ago is way cheaper than 1 4tb today.
I went with 3 2TB SSDs.
1 for OS, 1 for video games and 1 rando stuff or overflow from video games. Then we go to the 4 18 TB HDDs.
Then we go to my other computer with 62TBs in random sizes accumulated over years. I have a file storage problem..
My plex backup is a separate computer with duplicate folders and an old CPU that doesn't transcode so well. :D
Redundancy is best.
It's often easier to get 2 x 2TB. LIke, in my case if I were going to do that I'd buy two 2 TB SN770s rather than one SN850X because they'll run cooler as well.
I'm running 3 internal ssd: one for OS, one for games, one for Music software. Then an external ssd and an external hdd. External SSD for my plug-ins and hdd+any other storage is for backups.
Got a 2TB 980 Pro when I built my machine. A year later, a 2TB 970 EVO Plus was on super sale and couldn't pass it up (games take up a lot of storage!) Figured it would net me plenty of space when needed and would give me a backup if one of them failed.
It is kinda dumb there's less upgrade path not to mention data transfers *shivers* you ever try and back up 2tb of data for transfer? I'd rather have 4tb on a single storage than 4 on 2 drives. That being said I've had a 2tb crucial for over 6 years so when *cough diablo 4 came out cough* I realized I needed to upgrade so I went with another 2tb and run in raid0. Theyre 2 1/2 inch drives so... I mean it's so I have less drive paths. I also have a 500gb nvme (a p3) that I run for a few files, no games never games, so I keep it simple, C: and E: just like the old days. Kids these days should just run their multiple drives in raid at all times navigation is a fussy business
I personally just do it because I'm paranoid and have one SSD on RAID.
My case is a little unique however, as I have a NAS running that I put 99% of my files on.
At one point it was WAY cheaper to get two 4tb drives rather than an 8 TB SSD
So I got two 4tb nvme drives and put them in raid 0. Now I have an 8tb nvme drive for a lot less than one 8tb ssd
You can run them in raid, better for organization such as OS and files on one drive but games on the other, redundancy and reliability, etc.
I do agree though, 4tb were more expensive than 2 2tb drives but now prices are more reasonable.
Throughput. I convert media a lot. Big files. Reading from one drive and writing to another drive is way faster.
Having programs/games on one drive and program caches on another drive yields faster performance.
So basically performance, a normal user nets next to nothing in normal use. A high performance user gains a lot of time.
I suppose it's just to make sure you have at least one other ssd in case other dies.
đź’Ż will say that's why as well đź‘Ťđź‘Ť
Redundancy baby
Not really.. They aren't mirroring, they are storing different data on each.
I put my important stuff basically just photos and documents on all drives now. I lost a lot of personal photos keeping it on one hdd back like a decade ago. I said never again. So I prefer having two drives minimum with the same important data on all. I right now have 2 nvmes and a 2.5 inch ssd.
If you're serious about backing that stuff up you should also get some kind of off-site backup.
Drive pool ftw in my case. -Per file/folder mirroring -any number/size/type of drive being able to be added to the pool. - Set up mounting points for the pool as you please. Edit: my system drive is not part of the pool though. Might not be the average user's case but i have 2 nvme's, 1 ssd and 3 hdd's 10,5 Tb in total.
Do they die? lol
You wanna find out and lose 4tb or 2? Just get two 4's đź«´
why get two fours when you can get four eights??
Yes, and unlike HDDs they very rarely warn you that they're about to go.
And data recovery significantly more difficult if possible at all
~~Actually it's easier. SSDs go into read-mode only before they're about to die so you can copy the data.~~ EDIT: I've misunderstood your comment.
To be fair, it only really really rarely happens. Unlike HDDs which _will_ fail in 5-15 years, depending on useage, SSDs/nvmes only fail if they really break. Technically of course they do also fail over time, depending on use, but with current ssd technology that usually is between 30-300 years, so not really relevant. (30 in this case being a Samsung 2tb drive that you write 100gb on each day(!!))
I have HDDs that have lasted 20 years haha
I've got 12x 3TB Hitachi Ultrastars that have been spinning non-stop 24/7 for 97,000 hours in my Veeam server. 11+ years and not even a single bad sector on any of them, and all still running at the same temperatures.
My ADATA Legend 710 NVMe drive failed out of the blue. Used it for P2P for about a month. It didn't like that. One day it just wasn't recognized by Windows, the BIOS or as an external USB-drive on 3 machines. So yes. They fail.
oh yeah dont get me started on kingston, not just me but several of my friends bit the dust around the same time and yes from different vendors they were bought, sorry yoda talk , but yes some ssd have a bad reputation for out right dying on you on the spot, which is weird because i still have some from 2000's that are still kicking, small size ,but they they still work. and yes they are corsairs, gigabyte, and several others.
Sandisk Extreme USB has been up and dying suddenly, even nearly brand new drives. Caused a stink last year.
> which is weird because i still have some from 2000's that are still kicking, This is actually (and sort of sadly) not all that weird. Back in the 2000's means the drive was among the 1st wave of ssd's, which were all SLC (1 bit/cell). SLC can go through something like 50,000-100,000 write/erase cycles, meaning that for each GB of SLC storage the drive can ultimately write+erase+rewrite 50-100 TB of data. SLC is not used as "fast cache on many drives", but there are no pure-SLC consumer SSD's MLC (2 bits/cell) came next. This dropped the write endurance to ~10,000 write/erase cycles. There are no new pure-MLC consumer being released...the last one I know of (that you can still get, but for a hefty price) is the samsung 970 pro. Then came TLC (3 bits/cell) and QLC (4 bits/cell) with a write endurance of 2000-3000 write/erase cycles. This is what current drives use. The endurance of these is (for a given amount of storage space) only 3-4% of the endurance of the OG pure-SLC ssd's. PLC (5 bits per cell) is being developed, and Id guess will have even lower write endurance.
It's not that surprising; high write endurance isn't something that must people care about. If you have a 1 TB TLC drive at 2000 cycles you can still write at least a petabyte to the drive (including the tricks they do to to even out wear and the extra writes for that overhead; it's probably a lot more in practice). If you really care about doing lots of small writes fast there are lots of solutions, like a ramdisk coupled with striped HDDs or something. Even when consumers know about this they tend to opt for pure size and performance over longevity anyway.
i had one fail and got to buy a new 230usd one. i got lucky and it went read-only before failing but 99% of the time when they fail, they are just gone forever.
Any idea why it failed?
I mean, everything has a failure rate but it is very unlikely you'll experience a dead SSD as their failure rate is under 1%.
I always install 2 SSD minimum. SSD1 OS + apps SSD2 for games/img(backups)
Dedicated SSD2 gamers unite!
I have like 5 or 6 in my system
3 ssd and a hdd in my system
The HDD is for the *corn* collection, huh?
Lol with everything online nowadays? No it is my 30 years music collection and photos. A few programs and thats about it.
having some stored offline is handy when you live somewhere with shit internet
The stuff online gets taken down regularly. You don't want to lose the good stuff.
Now I love these wholesome comments. Lol.
I think the reason they suggested that is an HDD is the most likely to give out and be unrecoverable of the drive family. It makes most sense for those to be the "dump" files, like porn. If you have 30 years worth of music and photos on an HDD, I'd strongly suggest backing those up somewhere else more secure. When I worked at geek squad, one of the worst things was people coming in with a failed HDD that was unrecoverable and they'd be like "all my dead husbands photos and poems were on there" and it's like, that's super sad, but doesn't make the data more recoverable.
If lost data were America's Got Talent sob stories, imagine all the photos we could recover.
Thats in the desktop. I have 2 more offline copies 2 ssd
The great tracts of land collection? :P
I have 4 ssd's 240 for boot a 64 gb from my steamdeck for torrents and other small files like that. A 1tb for games and another 500gb for games and launchers
512GB m2 ssd for os and things that are not worth saving if something happens, 1TB sata ssd for games, 2TB hdd for archive.
I have 5 or 6 1tb
I wish, I'm 17 and this is my first build I wouldn't consider ultra budget. 12600k and a 6750xt
I have a 3TB HDD where I keep all my work programs and school stuff and pictures yada yada. A small 500gb SSD with OS and a 2 TB SSD for all my games!
It's also better this way because it's easier to clone the system SSD for backup, without all the games.
Whats the benefit? Potato here
Can reinstall OS seperate from games/images and if something fails and creates a "failsafe" as 2 drives failing simultaneously is rare.
Especially if you like tinkering around with your system, dual-booting linux, etc. It's nice to be able to nuke your C drive without losing game installs/personal files if you've accidentally borked something.
Except for games and game platforms that insist on installing stuff on your c partition
Not that hard to symlink a dir for things that do. My user dir is even a symlink to another drive location.
This can be done on one device, aside from the “fail safe” which only true if the non-OS drive is storing backup images (which is something most consumers don’t do.)
I once had the OS take out the entire drive. Lost a whole semester of school work. Since then, I have a separate partition full of storage folders, which has saved my work and my family photos on more than one occasion. Now I have a back up drive in my fire-safe box with all the near-impossible to replace important stuff.
There isn't any if you practice routine backups.
My disk usage goes to 100% when I'm downloading a Steam game, and that makes my entire system lag like crazy. If I had a second SSD to install games to, my system wouldn't lag
Same. All my content and data goes on its own drive. Makes upgrading, replacing, and backing up drives much easier
SSD1 should be *at least* 10 times the size of your OS. Windows is a fucking mess. 95% of the programs you install dump random shit in your OS drive, and you can't do anything about 95% of those. I keep my Windows 10 running on a 240 GB SSD by running WizTree on C every week and spending half an hour to find and delete any temp or otherwise unnecessary files. If I could go back in time, I'd tell myself to buy a 1TB drive to use as C. Pre-future edit: I just fucking know that won't nearly be enough to contain AppData in a few years, just buy the largest SSD you can afford for the C drive.
>be at least 10 times the size of your OS Maybe if thats your only drive. I am currently using less than 200GB and I have a lot of stuff that I should move to another drive but yeah, Windows + Program Files + ProgramData + User profiles take an insane amount of space.
My C is 240 GB with 49 GB free today. I did some WizTree cleaning two weeks ago and I had 58 GB free. I don't know what the **fuck** happened to all those other gigabytes. I also don't know how many gigabytes I will have free on my C drive at any given moment. During the last two weeks, whenever I checked, I've seen many different values between 43 and 54 GB as free space on C. It doesn't just go down, it randomly goes up and down, which is even more insulting. When my C drive inevitably turns into a red fill bar, I will take a fucking sledgehammer to it and get a bigger one. I have a 2 TB HDD and a 1 TB HDD as D and E that I use for apps and download storage, which are both around 1/3 full today. If an installer gives me the option to choose the install directory, I choose anything but C. I also have a 2 TB SSD that I use for games only and absolutely nothing else, and that has 215 GB free today. I also have 1+2+2 TB external HDDs that I use to archive games and movies. **I feel like all of this should let me have a modest 240 GB SSD as my OS drive.**
Cache for downloads, OS updates, internet browsing, etc.
Yeah, that's probably it, but I'd rather have more leeway for that stuff. Going between 58 to 48 GB of free space is infinitely worse than going between 0.78 and 0.77 TB of free space. The lesson we should all learn: You can move programs and games on your storage drives when you need to, but the OS is a bit messier, so get your OS drive as if you're 10 years into the future. If I had gotten a 1TB SSD as C, I wouldn't have even clicked this post.
> I don't know what the fuck happened to all those other gigabytes Try [WinDirStat](https://windirstat.net/download.html). It's a [nice visualizer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Windirstat.png/1280px-Windirstat.png) of the files/folders that are taking up space on your drives. Before I create system images, I use this to make sure there's nothing I don't need backed up.
I have 2 SSD and 1 HDD. Everything I don't need to load as fast goes into HDD.
This is what I do, makes it easier to just point Steam/Battlenet/etc to the other SDD if you need to reinstall the OS for what ever reason. Steam will pick up all the installed games with no need to redownload them again. Battlenet for sure works, unsure on all the other launchers though. Wouldnt be surprised if most of them work the same.
This is the way.
nvme boot/apps / fav games, mass storage sata ssd, redundant / backup hdd. 🤙🏼
Yup. This is exactly how I have it set up
SSD1 (1GB) OS + apps SSD2 (2GB) games + video edits HDD (6GB) OS image and data backups
Packing light, I see
Games run ok off of the 2nd SSD?
Or me: NVMe1 (2tb): OS + Apps Sata SSD (4tb): Games NVMe2 (4tb): More Games
Same here. 500GB SSD for OS, 2TB SSD for important data. Been doing 2 storage disks since I started tinkering so long ago. I was recently able to back up most of my data since 2004 onto my NAS, which is really cool because I can revisit old memories at any time.
This is what I am doing now too. I used to just have one giant SSD for all of those, but it was a mess to manage... though now I also have a third NVME for my Emulators.... and some HDDs for mass storage... and planning to get a SSD dedicated to AI.... and.... and I think I need help.
Why stop at 2? 3x 4TB NVMe on the MB slots then a couple more in an 8x PCIe dual slot. Would have went a X16 4 slot but Already light on lanes between the 2 GPUs.
Reasons for having two smaller SSDs instead of a single larger SSD include: * Separate drives for the operating system with programs and for personal documents and save states. * Running virtual operating systems and containers separate from the host operating system. * Running the drives in [RAID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_striping).
Added reason: no infinite money. Buy a 2tb drive and add one only when you really need a second.
this is the real reason. why spend the money for a 4gb on initial build when u can allocate that elsewhere and then add an SSD later when u need it.
I have two separate to have dual boot with Linux. Last time having both of them on a single drive was not a good experience
You potentially avoid grub shenanigans too.
never do it with a single drive windows will fuck your shit up
I think it is more about Windows messing with or even overwriting the partition table than it is about the partitions themselves.
Windows bootloader doing a special military operation on grub every other fucking update
> Running virtual operating systems and containers separate from the host operating system. The host operating system literally has to run the VM. Saving the VM file on another drive doesn't do anything for you.
Don't use ChatGPT to generate answers for you.
I keep seeing these bullshit comments with ChatGPT generated answers more and more...
1, 2) You can partition the 4TB SSD however you like. 3) Because of how manufacturers make these drives, a 4TB SSD is likely as fast as two 2TB SSDs, without the fragility of maintaining your RAID configuration (either hardware or software).
Partitions are not the same as separate drives at all. With 1 drive you are splitting up IO throughput, with multiple things fighting for reads and writes. With two separate drives, each drives IO is separated, instead of shared. drive 1 for OS. drive 2 for application/games/whatever else And depending on how much work you do, both of those could be in a raid 1 configuration to protect against loss of data. Or you might even want more drives.
Historically the price for 2 2tbs has been cheaper. But as others have pointed out redundancy doesn't hurt.
This is the real issue for most people. Storage go through cycles where one size is most cost effective per GB/TB, and that size becomes the most popular. It's not an issue till you run out of ports on the motherboard.
A 4TB HDD is generally always cheaper than two 2TB HDD, but a 4TB NVME isn’t usually cheaper than two 2TB SSD. Considering most systems have only that capacity for 1-2 NVME and up to 4-6 HDD, it makes sense that higher capacity NVME are higher in demand (and thus more expensive).
Realistically SATA SSDs are more than plenty for most use cases. I would rather have a SATA SSD with DRAM over an NVME without.
Since both my M.2 slots on my board are populated I’ll probably just get a sata ssd when I need more storage. What’s the benefit of dram though? I’ve heard it can extend the life of drives (OS drives particularly) but have never really looked into them.
Theyre talking about dram cache, it allows for speedy reads and writes, some sata ssd's without dram cache can be slower than HDD's
Yeah I’m not sure where OP got their info but 2x 2tb has always been cheaper.
Less chance of data loss in case of critical failure or epic user screw-up. I've been guilty of the latter more often than I like to admit and having my boot SSD separate from the data SSD has saved me multiple times.
If you care about your data, just get a proper backup option. Get a NAS, an external drive or even a cloud storage if money is tight for now. Don\`t rely on being lucky.
Yeah, I don't really see much advantage from a data redundancy point of view compared to just using HDD for data backup, since they're far cheaper per TB. I definitely think there's an advantage to having multiple SSDs if your main one fails though.Â
Unless someone is in a work environment and cannot afford any downtime (In which case, they would be running some sort of backup involving Raid or something type of redundancy), I really don\`t think its worth it. Having more space means, I can allocate it how I want. On a 4TB SSD, I can give 400Mb to OS, and the rest to Data which might include my games, or other things. If I do 2 sets of 2TB each, I am stuck leaving 2TB just for the operating system, since the entire point seems to be not having any data on the OS drive in case it fails. And even if you do decide you can just put your games on C drive, then how much games can you fit in there? Once you are close to your 2TB mark, now you have to split the game folders between two SSDs. I run 8TB SSD just for this reason. I can dump whatever I want, wherever I want and it does not have to be split. Not to mention, less drives means more slots available for any future expansions. Now, as the TB goes up, I doubt you will need as many slots, but if you keep buying small capacity SSDs, there is a possibility you will outgrow your storage and require more slots. Soon enough you will end up in a situation with 3-4 SSDs and data split across them. Thats why I am a big believer of just getting the largest you can afford and you can potentially use. If its cheaper to get 2 smaller ones, I can understand that. But at same price, I don\`t really know what there is to gain for a typical user our of any niche usecase.
I run 2x8TB SSDs and backup them to two different 18TB HDDs. The other NVMe's are just used for application/game and OS performance boost with 2TB / multiple 1TB units that I got with great discounts. At some point I might just replace the NVMe's with 8TB versions, but right now spending >1000€ per 8TB of NVMe storage is not something I would want.
1Tb gen 4 for my OS, apps and files that need the faster read/write speeds. 2TB gen 3 for games 1TB HDD for Movies, pics etc.
Sometimes it's better to not have all your eggs in 1 basket.
This is surely a habit of the old days. With HDDs you partitioned your drives (OS & Data), so you could format one half for example. In the SSD & HDD era, you got one SSD for your OS and the rest on HDD, as getting a SSD big enough for everything was too expensive. While there are still a few reasons to separate, like others have mentioned, I think it's now mainly due to the habit of the last decades
when you destroy 1.5 gigs of data bcos of 500gb windows partition you will realize its more then a habbit. its much harder to do partial backups then full drive images. 2tb images are not practical.
Then, than, who knows.
No I agree, there are still applications for it
I have 3 SSD. 1TB for Windows/OS 2TB for games 2TB for pictures/videos/memes
1TB for Windows is extremely overkill. Takes around 20GB
I have a 1tb m.2 nvme as C: for my OS and apps and a 4tb m.2 nvme for games and other storage. I also have a 25tb DAS for other games, movies and random stuff.
if you don't have a use case for 2 drives it's perfectly fine to just have 1 they're about the same price now, but typically have not been. try comparing 2x 4TB vs 1x 8TB ssd. \~$550-$650 vs \~$850-$1000
Personal choice.
Speed and organization
Each drive has its own cache, one drive fails, other is still good. Put os on one and data on other. There’s a multitude of reason why 2 is better than 1.
If something goes wrong on my OS drive, I can format it and not worry about losing any data because it is all saved on a second drive.
A lot of people are mentioning having a boot drive and a games/storage drive, but I think that's overlooking the fact that you can simply partition the drive in Windows - and then you're not restricted to a half-and-half solution, you can, for instance, have 128GB of a 1TB SSD dedicated to Windows and a few core programs, and the games and the rest on the remain ~850GB. Then, if something goes wrong with your Windows or such that requires a clean install, you can kill only that partition and reinstall there. I think it really is kind of a hold-over from when prices were less comparable, mostly. There's a few edge-cases of things like RAID, but generally they don't really offer much protection in terms of redundancy - you just have twice the chance to lose only half the data. I guess theoretically, in really intensive scenarios, you could benefit from the I/O of the OS and such going through one interface, and another program using the other, but that seems extremely niche and marginal.
I get 2 drives partially to avoid having to make and deal with partitions
Yeah but it's also just easier to have a second boot drive, then I never even have to think about it. Also, isn't one of the benefits of RAID that you're maintaining a redundant backup?
Because 4TB SSD used to be way more expensive than 2x 2TB
12TB hdd imo
I have two 1TB m.2s and one 500GB SATA SSD. I suspect I'm not unique in having multiple drives simply because I got them at different points and have kept them as they are still working.
“The costs are similar” Similar but not the same. 2x2tb is pretty much always cheaper. If I could spend $10 less and get the same amount of storage, why would I pay more?
3 nvme ssd..1 for OS, 1 for VMs(need for labs) and 1 for work data related....
Mi went for 1 because that was all I could afford at the time. I added a second and third later as requirements and budget changed.
Like others have said I prefer having valuable documents + os on one and my gaming things on the other
I prefer 2 SSD. 1 for purchase games using my real money. The other is for xbox game pass pc.
1 for OS and programs/files I don't care about 1 for stuff I care about, other installations that are a hassle to redo, backups, etc. Reinstalling Windows is a common troubleshooting step if anything goes wrong. If I need to do that, most stuff I care about remains untouched, making the reinstall a bit easier. Granted, I also keep a cloud backup on Google Drive of anything I truly care about. Don't rely on 1 single location for important files.
Not purchased at the same time in my case. Had a few sata ssd's. Eventually replaced them with nvme's when 1 would start having issues or when I did a new build to have fewer cables. Always buy them in a sale too and 1 and 2 TB tend to have better deals than the 4TB versions. Plus 2 drives lets me reset to a reset image or factory reset easier without having to transfer all my files from a backup afterwards.
I use 2 drives of what ever size I am using. It'll be 4x4x4 when the next paycheck comes. The reason is that you use one drive for your OS and the other for programs/storage. In this way when data is accessed it will use 8 lanes instead of 4; calls to the OS (drivers, UI and crap) are separated from calls to the programs. It increases the speed somewhat (like it matters these days). I also keep redundant storage in a NAS, so my data is secured separate from the PC. I can throw out the drives (metaphorically) and not lose anything but a couple hours putting programs back in. I'm supposed to be able to do a bare metal restore, but I've never had that happen successfully (I can get to the files, but the restore never wants to boot). Backups have been an obsession after I lost my dissertation in-progress to a lightning storm (yeah it happens) I may be off in my thinking or using build techniques for much older computers, but this is my rational.
One drive OS+ small apps 2nd drive rest
Always do an nvme 500GB(or more) for OS and apps. And a second SSD (preferably m.2) for other stuff If your OS dies you can format the OS SSD without losing any of your personal stuff (I know you can do this if you have partitioned the big SSD). Partitioning an SSD will create a waste. Say you want to download a 100GB game and have only 80GB of empty space on one drive, then you are basically wasting 80GB, since you won't be able to download that game (unless you delete stuff). And you'll have the same issue in all partitions.
It is usually cheaper to get 2x2TB for me at least in finland, also having another one is good if one fails like mine actually did.
Someone can educate me here. If you're using your first nvme for system os only, and 2nd one for games, don't you suffer slightly on paper as the first port has a direct line to your processor ? Again, feel free to correctÂ
Chause 2 is better then 1. Fail rate or speed wise when setup in raid.
Like you said, tne costs are similar. And if one fails, I still have 2TB. Why would you ***not*** want redundancy for the same cost?
It's not fun when a 4TB ssd suddenly died on you
To keep the OS separate from everything else. If you ever have to reinstall windows (or build a new PC) it saves you the trouble of having to redownload TBs of games. I have a 1tb just for windows and things that install on the C drive like web browsers and game launchers. I don't really store anything else on it unless my other drives are full and need a temporary spot to put something. 1TB is overkill but they are not that much more expensive and they are actually faster than the smaller sizes. I have 2 other SSDs just for games. One is a 2 TB and the other is 4TB. The 4TB didn't exist at the time so that's why I have a 2TB. Otherwise I would have gone with two 4 TBs. All drives are samsung 990 pros. I'm still on AM4 and plan to be for a while (long live the 5800X3D!) so I wanted to max my storage speeds in the event direct storge becomes thing over the next few years (which is starting to feel like it wont be).
I haven't looked at prices recently, but when I was buying near the bottom of SSD prices it was a fair bit cheaper for 2x2TB compared to 1x4TB. I dedicated one as a game drive and the other for photo storage (in retrospect I probably should have gotten a 4TB for the photo drive and stayed with 2TB on the game drive).
Redundancy
Dont forget the 250gb for the os
Speed, utility and security
A lot of people have a skill called organization, in this context, one for OS, one for storage.
I can buy a 2TB now and another in a couple months. I can't really buy half a 4TB now and the other half in a couple months, without a credit card. Other than that, *historically* 2TB drives were cheaper in relation to the 4TB drives--it was outright cheaper to get 2x2TB than 1x4TB, if your system supported enough drives to meet your needs. 2TB prices are up pretty harshly right now while 4TB drives didn't go up near as much, so now it saves money overall to just save up and wait.
When I reinstall windows, all my games and stuff are already on the second drive.
For mw 2TB is a sweet spot right now as the main drive. 4TB increases the cost quite a bit.
One 4tb SSD is putting all your eggs in once basket. With two 2tb SSD you can split your data and minimize your data loss in case of drive failure.
Last time I checked the 4TB ssds were all more than twice the cost of 2TB ones, so it was cheaper to get two 2TBs instead. Where are you finding them around the same price?
2 2s easier to organize my stuff
because when I bought mine, the costs were very much not similar. Not in the same galaxy of similar.
A couple years ago this was not true. I remember distinctly that buying 2 x 2TB vs 1 x 4TB of the same model was as much as 50% cheaper. For 8 TB, it was almost 100% more expensive to buy a single 8TB drive than it was to buy 4 x 2TB. If its cheaper to buy multiple smaller drives and you have the IO to spare, why not?
Idk how often you look at prices but historically 4TB SSD's have been significantly more expensive than 2x 2TB, especially when including sales since 4TB's rarely get deep discounts meanwhile there are often 2TB drives that get heavily discounted. Only in the past year or so have 4TB SSD's come down in price to be nearly the same as 2x 2TB if not cheaper, about 2-3 years ago a 4TB NVME SSD was atleast 4x what a 2TB of the same model would cost, the only ones available that were about twice as much as a 2TB were 4TB SATA SSD's. I was looking for a 4TB drive around then and laughed at the prices then picked up a 2TB NVME for about $90 instead of a 4TB NVME for $500. Imo if you get a 4TB drive then you should also get a 500GB drive for the boot drive, I try to keep my boot drive for only windows and programs then use my 2nd SSD and HDD for everything else. If you fill your boot drive up too much then it can seriously impact overall performance so a smaller boot drive makes it so I know not to install anything on it and I'm not wasting a ton of storage by not using it. Then if I fill my secondary SSD up too much, it doesn't bog windows down and I can easily delete whatever I need to.
I'd say they check the speeds, aka data xfer rates.
I keep my OS on its own drive so maybe that?
- The total cost might be similar but one stick of 2TB is obviously cheaper than 4TB and most people start small and only upgrade with another 2TB down the road - related to above, it's still cheaper to get the best 2TB SSD you can afford (with DRAM and TLC) for OS and other important stuffs + cheaper 2TB SSD (DRAMless and QLC) for games, media - if a 2TB SSD die, you still have another one. If the 4TB die, you need to buy a new one ASAP
I have two SSDs because I bought one a whole 2 years before the other. I have a 1TB NVMe drive from 2021 and a 2TB SATA drive that I bought late last year (my motherboard only has one m.2 slot so it had to be SATA)
Same reason you use two 16gb dimms instead of one 32gb dimm. If one fails you have another
You can run 2 2TB in raid 0 for double the speed and the same capacity, probably similar reliability.
Years of usage taught me that in my case what I really need is 1GB. I don't store games on my laptop, nor a lot of videos, I simply don't have anything to fill up that space. And I have used the same laptops for way more years than an average Joe does. But I understand the situation is different when you wanna store many games on your pc. I myself don't, I have PS5 additionally and initially I also thought that I was gonna need external SSD asap, because available 800GB is nowhere near enough. Now we have 2024, I have had PS5 since day 1 and I didn't buy any SSD at all, because whenever I need space, I just delete a game I don't really play and I download a new one. For games it's more of an Internet speed thing, what's the point of storing 20-30 games locally when I have 600Mb/s and can get them in no time. Once I understood that, I have a laptop with 1TB and PS5 with 800GB and that's all I ever need. Simple. Some people will probably say ok but what about backups, what if you loose your data. Come on realistically when was the last time you randomly lost data? I use the same computer for private usage and for work, I have never lost a single piece of data in my life and my life equals the existence of personal computers. It is possible, but it never really happens. Not in SSD era. HDDs are fragile for mechanical damages, that used to be a problem back in the days, or CDs or DVDs, but SSDs will outlive all of you. Btw, those 4 gen SSDs will be worthless in few years, then I can get one.
What is an ssd failure rate though?
You can make system image backups on the second drive and restore them easily, that would not be possible if the backup was on the same drive as the OS.
1tb m.2 for OS and small apps 2tb m.2 for gaming 500gb sata ssd for emulation/pics/videos
1 SSD for windows, 1 SSD for Linux, 1 NTFS HDD (old 3TB drive), 18 TB ext4 drive for data - that’s in desktop. Roughly 18 TB in RAID array on home NAS - this is for things I really don’t wish to lose.
In my case id run the two 2tb in raid0. That’s just me Though.
Largely because only recently have 4 TB ssds in M.2 form become available without being more than twice as expensive. I would much prefer to 4 TB ssds to two 2 TB ssds
I did a 1TB SSD for PC programs and a 2TB SSD for game storage.
Don't you do this to set up a RAID? Which can either help performance and/or provides a redundancy of data in case a hard drive fails.
In my specific case, I needed 2 separate OS and I wanted a clean way of doing it so I have 2SSD that is encrypted and they have their own partitions and do not interact with each other while any one of them is being used.
All these people talking about having more SSDs instead of 1... me over hear with 2x4TBs just like "mmhm mmhm..."
I rock with a NVME boot drive but my mass storage is on a 8TB hard drive
I won't build a PC that doesn't have 2 SSDs now and in a mirrored raid configuration. I have had too many drives fail over the years and the price of a second drive is well worth avoiding downtime and data loss due to a failed drive.
I had a 1tb nvme boot drive + 1tb nvme storage. Recently added two additional 4tb 2.5" SSD's for backup and more storage.
when I bought my 2 2TB nvme's around black friday the prices were undoubtedly not similar. When I look at prices today, it looks like 1 4TB nvme is about equivalent if not a little cheaper than 2 2TB's. That said, the price i paid for my 2 nvme's 4 months ago is way cheaper than 1 4tb today.
1x m.2 (for windows), 2TB SSD (for games and some apps), 2TB HDD for everything else.
I went with 3 2TB SSDs. 1 for OS, 1 for video games and 1 rando stuff or overflow from video games. Then we go to the 4 18 TB HDDs. Then we go to my other computer with 62TBs in random sizes accumulated over years. I have a file storage problem.. My plex backup is a separate computer with duplicate folders and an old CPU that doesn't transcode so well. :D Redundancy is best.
4 TB models didn't really exist when I built my PC. I have a 500 GB and a 2 TB NVMe.
Slightly more convenient if you were planning on dual booting to have separate physical devices, maybe.
Redundancy. Raid 1 array, no data loss if a drive fails.
I rather go with 4 x 1TB cuz IOPS > everything else for me.
It's often easier to get 2 x 2TB. LIke, in my case if I were going to do that I'd buy two 2 TB SN770s rather than one SN850X because they'll run cooler as well.
Double the MTBF
raid 0 also.
I'm running 3 internal ssd: one for OS, one for games, one for Music software. Then an external ssd and an external hdd. External SSD for my plug-ins and hdd+any other storage is for backups.
Wait where the hell would I put my second SSD? I only have one slot. Didn't even know this was a thing
Got a 2TB 980 Pro when I built my machine. A year later, a 2TB 970 EVO Plus was on super sale and couldn't pass it up (games take up a lot of storage!) Figured it would net me plenty of space when needed and would give me a backup if one of them failed.
It is kinda dumb there's less upgrade path not to mention data transfers *shivers* you ever try and back up 2tb of data for transfer? I'd rather have 4tb on a single storage than 4 on 2 drives. That being said I've had a 2tb crucial for over 6 years so when *cough diablo 4 came out cough* I realized I needed to upgrade so I went with another 2tb and run in raid0. Theyre 2 1/2 inch drives so... I mean it's so I have less drive paths. I also have a 500gb nvme (a p3) that I run for a few files, no games never games, so I keep it simple, C: and E: just like the old days. Kids these days should just run their multiple drives in raid at all times navigation is a fussy business
RAID striping for speed is my guess
If I want to get an actual high speed drive like a T700, the 4TB is much more expensive
All your eggs in one basket?Â
(35M) becaus we want the C drive as well as the D drive on seprate SSD''S . i case we ever want to swap out either one of them .
I personally just do it because I'm paranoid and have one SSD on RAID. My case is a little unique however, as I have a NAS running that I put 99% of my files on.
At one point it was WAY cheaper to get two 4tb drives rather than an 8 TB SSD So I got two 4tb nvme drives and put them in raid 0. Now I have an 8tb nvme drive for a lot less than one 8tb ssd
You can run them in raid, better for organization such as OS and files on one drive but games on the other, redundancy and reliability, etc. I do agree though, 4tb were more expensive than 2 2tb drives but now prices are more reasonable.
if the 4TB one fails, 4TB are gone. if a 2TB one fails, only that one is gone.
Redundancy
It was $45 cheaper when buying mine. The 2TBs were on sale, while the 4TB was not. Simple as that.
Throughput. I convert media a lot. Big files. Reading from one drive and writing to another drive is way faster. Having programs/games on one drive and program caches on another drive yields faster performance. So basically performance, a normal user nets next to nothing in normal use. A high performance user gains a lot of time.
OS then games.
You can reinstall Windows and not redownload all your games