Should SSD's only be used as boot drives?

Mighty-Lu-Bu · Sep 10, 2018

I am currently using a 500GB NVME PCIE SSD for my boot drive and I have a 1TB SSD that I use for my games. I have been told that I shouldn't use large SSDs because they aren't as reliable as traditional hard drives because they have a max read / write. I was thinking of possibly selling my old 1TB SSD and perhaps using either a 2TB 7200 HDD or a 2TB SSHD.

Totally · Sep 10, 2018

no, and failure rates are about the same making no difference between their useful life. SSD if/when you can afford it or makes sense, HDD otherwise.

newtekie1 · Sep 10, 2018

They have a limited number of writes, but theoretically unlimited reads. This is actually pretty well perfect for a storage drive.

There's no reason not to use an SSD for a secondary drive if you can afford one big enough for what you need.

storm-chaser · Sep 10, 2018

Mechanical drives have the potential to fail just like any SSD. Except with an SSD, you have no moving parts and longevity gets better every year. I personally will never go back to a mechanical drive, I've only lost one solid state drive and I've probably purchased at least 10 in the past decade. For most people, you will never put enough read / writes on an SSD to be worried about it failing. If you are curious you can use Crystal Disk Info to see how many reads and writes you have on your gaming drive.

hat · Sep 10, 2018

Nah. SSDs have come a long way since data reliability was a major concern... and as a drive that just holes games, there's not much writing going on anyway, so it's likely still in very good health.

FreedomEclipse · Sep 10, 2018

One ssd for OS, one SSD for games and a regular drive for storage because of better vfm

StrayKAT · Sep 10, 2018

I would definitely use SSD for secondary drive.. but I wouldn't be happy with anything less than 5-6GB. So I wait and use HDDs with caching.

DRDNA · Sep 10, 2018

I think SSd are actually a little more reliable. The biggest killer of an SSd is running them too full. The only failures i have seen personally on SSD's drives was just that, the ssd drives were way too full and had no extra sectors to spare when they were needed and then KABAM drive failed with no way to recover....but yeah SSd all the way if you can afford it.

StrayKAT · Sep 11, 2018

DRDNA said:
I think SSd are actually a little more reliable. The biggest killer of an SSd is running them too full. The only failures i have seen personally on SSD's drives was just that, the ssd drives were way too full and had no extra sectors to spare when they were needed and then KABAM drive failed with no way to recover....but yeah SSd all the way if you can afford it.

One exception: Optane works better the fuller it is.

Solaris17 · Sep 11, 2018

Totally fine, I dont have a single platter of spinning rust in my rig. Just make sure you TRIM them once in awhile and you are good to go. I even run consumer SSDs in RAID arrays on my lab servers as my VM drive. They get the shit beat out of them and they are going strong.

newtekie1 · Sep 11, 2018

StrayKAT said:
One exception: Optane works better the fuller it is.

AFAIK, the cache function works better, but the drives themselves don't.

Tallencor · Sep 11, 2018

Ssd all the way. If by some chance it reaches an eol scenario within 5 yrs ( I feel that's a good cost per consumption) then buy another and clone.
As most others have said ssd's have come a long way in reliability which is likely lengthened due to the overall less reads a "Storage drive" will do.

StrayKAT · Sep 11, 2018

newtekie1 said:
AFAIK, the cache function works better, but the drives themselves don't.

Oh really? Well, I guess I still benefit. I have a 900p for system drive.. but to my surprise, I found out that since 8th gen and x299, you can use Optane as a cache on a secondary drive (it used to be just the boot drive). So I also put in Optane memory for my HDD. Some features are disabled though (you can't "pin" applications like you can with a system drive.. where it allows you allocate space specifically for them).

Mussels · Sep 11, 2018

SSD all the way

i use a 4TB mech in the download box because it gets heavy writes done to it, but its boot drive is an SSD as well

RejZoR · Sep 11, 2018

People who don't use SSD for full data storage in a computer don't know what they are missing. SSD boot drives are silly and useless.

hat · Sep 11, 2018

RejZoR said:
People who don't use SSD for full data storage in a computer don't know what they are missing. SSD boot drives are silly and useless.

Hmm... conversely, people who use SSD for full data storage are missing a pretty good chunk of cash out of their wallet, while SSD boot drives remain an economical solution for a fast, responsive system. While it's true that price per GB has greatly improved for SSDs in recent years, it's still totally eclipsed by the affordability of mass storage with HDDs. You can get a 4TB HDD for less than a 1TB SSD.

StrayKAT · Sep 11, 2018

RejZoR said:
People who don't use SSD for full data storage in a computer don't know what they are missing. SSD boot drives are silly and useless.

It's more like half-half for me. I run the system and many main applications on main drive. The secondary is mainly for games.. but even then, I put the Steam/GOG launchers and some games on SSD too.

If anyone didn't realize you can go to the Settings in Win 10, and specifically allocate where Docs/Vids/Downloads is pretty easily. Along with where MS Store Apps/Games get installed. Or you can mostly install them on the C drive, but specifically choose which specific MS Store apps get put on a secondary drive by selecting the options in the "Add/Remove" programs settings. It's useful if you want one game on C or D (or wherever), but not others.

hat · Sep 11, 2018

StrayKAT said:
It's more like half-half for me. I run the system and many main applications on main drive. The secondary is mainly for games.. but even then, I put the Steam/GOG launchers and some games on SSD too.

If anyone didn't realize you can go to the Settings in Win 10, and specifically allocate where Docs/Vids/Downloads is pretty easily. Along with where MS Store Apps/Games get installed. Or you can mostly install them on the C drive, but specifically choose which specific MS Store apps get put on a secondary drive by selecting the options in the "Add/Remove" programs settings. It's useful if you want one game on C or D (or wherever), but not others.

I remember a bunch of hacky tricks when a lot of people were using very small SSDs (like 32GB), moving as much away from C: as possible, so Windows could live on it comfortably... this was usually done due to size constraints or because people were worried about too many write cycles to the SSD. It's a pretty outdated tactic these days, and even then I thought it was a pretty silly thing to do...

StrayKAT · Sep 11, 2018

hat said:
I remember a bunch of hacky tricks when a lot of people were using very small SSDs (like 32GB), moving as much away from C: as possible, so Windows could live on it comfortably... this was usually done due to size constraints or because people were worried about too many write cycles to the SSD. It's a pretty outdated tactic these days, and even then I thought it was a pretty silly thing to do...

I couldn't do that even if I wanted. Seems like my base system with drivers already amounts to 32GB or so. But my main drive is 280GB. Which is more than enough for the system and running select apps.

If 10TB SSDs were cheap, I wouldn't do this at all. But alas. That's not reality

hat · Sep 11, 2018

StrayKAT said:
I couldn't do that even if I wanted. Seems like my base system with drivers already amounts to 32GB or so. But my main drive is 280GB. Which is more than enough for the system and running select apps.

If 10TB SSDs were cheap, I wouldn't do this at all. But alas. That's not reality

This was back in the Windows 7 days... the OS was probably smaller. Today though, 128GB drives can be had for the same price as a trip to Taco Bell for you and yours, and my 128GB drive still has plenty of room to spare, even with a few games on it. It's surely large enough for a simple boot drive with any programs 99% of people would use.

StrayKAT · Sep 11, 2018

hat said:
This was back in the Windows 7 days... the OS was probably smaller. Today though, 128GB drives can be had for the same price as a trip to Taco Bell for you and yours, and my 128GB drive still has plenty of room to spare, even with a few games on it. It's surely large enough for a simple boot drive with any programs 99% of people would use.

Yes, I would tell people to at least go with that.

But when it comes to large storage (for a whole game library + vids/docs/music/etc), SSDs still aren't much of an option. Even the big Samsung 4tb (which still is very pricey) is still too small for me.

hat · Sep 11, 2018

I could comfortably deal with a 1TB SSD for games, after that HDD comes into play for mass storage...

StrayKAT · Sep 11, 2018

hat said:
I could comfortably deal with a 1TB SSD for games, after that HDD comes into play for mass storage...

I guess I could, but I like keeping my whole library on demand.. sans a few here and there. And that takes up at least 3TB.

And the rate it's going, it's just going to grow worse. Forza 7 is 100GB on it's own.

peche · Sep 12, 2018

if you are able to get one, no problems, other wise save on HDD, you can get 2TB or even 4TB drives for pretty interesting price tags,

Regards,

Deleted member 178884 · Sep 12, 2018

For me the best combo is at least a 256gb ssd for OS only and a HDD for games, I personally use a 480gb kingston ssd for the OS only and a 6tb x300 toshiba drive for storage / games

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Should SSD's only be used as boot drives?

Mighty-Lu-Bu

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