Anyone using a 1TB SSD?

For some reason I don't really seem comfortable with the idea of running my system from a small partition/drive and keeping my software on another one. Besides, I'd rather migrate than reinstall. The last thing I want to do is one million Windows updates. I could migrate to a 500 GB disk after getting rid of 1) pure data like old photos etc., 2) games I no longer play etc. But it could get tight after a while, especially if I were to upgrade my GPU and start playing newer games, which weigh more.

Here are the prices where I live. ForEx is irrelevant, just the proportions:

480 GB costs a minimum of PLN 599
500 GB comes at an expensive premium, PLN 650, though that's Samsung EVO, which is also a superior drive
520 GB is a bit more expensive and not necessarily as good, say 700

... and 960-1000 GB comes at around 1000 (900 used, but I'm not gonna get a used SSD for 90% of the price of a new one).

A thousand feels like a metric ton of money (our wages are notoriously poor here), basically half the price of a much better PC than the one I currently have. However, it's still only 2x the price of 500 GB.

Here's the problem: it's gonna take a while before I fill out 1 TB. By that time SSD might be cheaper. So it could be overkill compared to getting a good, trusted Samsung EVO rather than a Sandisk 1TB or something.

Would you get the drive in my situation or just take the Samsung EVO 500 GB, or wait actually?

I both work and play on this computer, so the benefit would be felt more at work than gaming, so it's not just for play, which makes it a bit easier to justiy.

I have a 1tb Samsung Evo as a secondary drive. If you can split your data (music, movies, documents, some games) off to a second drive, a 500 GB should be more than enough. I'd suggest taking inventory of things you absolutely want on the drive, and go from there.

i use a 128gb ssd just for my OS and software. I have a bigger fear of losing data like photos and documents so I leave all those on a 2tb HDD. I do have a 2nd ssd I use just for games and testing other software although some may not have that convenience and still have/want to install those on say the same ssd as the OS but with games taking up most of the space it can be worrisome. At least the good thing with Steam (assuming you use it) is that it allows someone to make a backup of whatever game in your library and save it in another location (which I also keep on the HDD) and that is VERY convenient instead of having to delete a game and then having to re-download it again later if you like to play something again that you deleted to make room.

thideras said:

I have a 1tb Samsung Evo as a secondary drive. If you can split your data (music, movies, documents, some games) off to a second drive, a 500 GB should be more than enough. I'd suggest taking inventory of things you absolutely want on the drive, and go from there.

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About 320 GB after removing pure data storage, perhaps 240 after thinning out by games. How much free space would I need to keep on the drive to avoid degrading performance?

Also, what if I RAID two 500's, will that give me much more safety from having to fumble with more complicated system backups? This is kinda important to me because I often have very short deadlines at work, where several hours make a lot of difference.

myndlessdayz said:

i use a 128gb ssd just for my OS and software. I have a bigger fear of losing data like photos and documents so I leave all those on a 2tb HDD. I do have a 2nd ssd I use just for games and testing other software although some may not have that convenience and still have/want to install those on say the same ssd as the OS but with games taking up most of the space it can be worrisome. At least the good thing with Steam (assuming you use it) is that it allows someone to make a backup of whatever game in your library and save it in another location (which I also keep on the HDD) and that is VERY convenient instead of having to delete a game and then having to re-download it again later if you like to play something again that you deleted to make room.

Click to expand...

Thanks, that's great to know.

NewbieOneKenobi said:

About 320 GB after removing pure data storage, perhaps 240 after thinning out by games. How much free space would I need to keep on the drive to avoid degrading performance?

Also, what if I RAID two 500's, will that give me much more safety from having to fumble with more complicated system backups? This is kinda important to me because I often have very short deadlines at work, where several hours make a lot of difference.

Click to expand...

I don't think anything other than 100% full is going to degrade performance. Don't bother with RAID. It is going to cause way more headaches than it will solve. RAID is also not a backup.

I use to run SSD's in RAID 0 and it was ok but didn't see any major benefit except that it made it one large drive. That was when SSD's first came out, when I got a pair of 80's and then 128's. Since I've used a 256GB and now 512GB as my main OS/program drive with spare data on my slightly older and smaller SSD's. Its so much nicer not running RAID setups, less bootup issues, quicker boot times just overall better IMO.

Now filling up the drive, really you don't suffer many performance issues with it compared to a traditional HDD. I got a 256GB here at work on my laptop and for almost 2 months I had 1-2GB of free space on it, and still preformed like a champ. Even got below 100MB of free space and ran no issues. Now not saying it won't slow down, it does, but its still so quick in response time its hard to notice unless your reaaaly monitoring it.

As for RAID, yeah Thideras mentioned it the best, its not a backup, as well it can cause issues. If you want true backup you'll want to do it daily or even every couple hours to maybe an external HDD if its that important. If time is money type of deal and afraid of a drive failing and need to be operational without down time, doing a RAID 1 (mirroring the drive) will help against drive failure, but you'll still want to do a backup of the drive.

Do 7 (2 M500 960 GB, 3 M550 1TB (actually 1.02 TB) and 2 MX200 1TB) count as using one? Those prices are odd. U.S. prices (and every other country I've seen on Amazon links) for every brand I've looked at have every increase in size costing less per GB.

I have every one partitioned with about 5% space unused, just for wear-leveling paranoia. One of them is C: for Windows, a second is a secondary drive for data (e.g. Downloads), and the other five are used by LVM in Linux so I can stripe/mirror just a few mount points. Regarding what size is sufficient, my C: has 662 GB in use right now by Windows 10, LibreOffice, Visual Studio, IDEA, CLion, lots of development libraries (biggest being Qt), MSYS2 tools, 40 Steam games (TF2, entire X series, all Witcher series, Evolve, Starbound, etc.), and a half dozen Origin games (BF3,4, ME3, DAO, DA2). All the dev tools put together are still well under 100 GB, so if your primary motivation is really work, that might not fly for a cost excuse