Hard drive???

[pembquist]

Thinking of getting a new hard drive, is there any problem with using only an SSD, I remember some old posts about not using one for your os, I only want one drive.

[Bizman]

The only issue I know of having an SSD only is in the nature of how they handle updates compared to HDD's. Skuzzy has mentioned it several times in the past. The problem is that AH can/will corrupt at some point; today, next week, next month, next year, no-one can tell. If you've prepared to do a full reinstall when that happens, an SSD is all you need.

[Vulcan]

The only issue I know of having an SSD only is in the nature of how they handle updates compared to HDD's. Skuzzy has mentioned it several times in the past. The problem is that AH can/will corrupt at some point; today, next week, next month, next year, no-one can tell. If you've prepared to do a full reinstall when that happens, an SSD is all you need.

That said I have never ever had issues with SSDs myself. And apart from myself I manage my 3 boys PC/laptops (home has 4 gaming PCs, 5 laptops, several Windows servers, all run SSDs plus some HDDs). And they get upgraded changed on a somewhat regular basis. Most of the SSDs are quite old, is the upgrade process here is trickle down - dad gets a new component/PC - kids inherit old bits 

[guncrasher]

I've had an ssd for about 5 years outside of my case on the carpet for 5 years.  haven't had a problem yet. its the only drive I have connected.


semp

[Shuffler]

I have been running a 1TB SSD at work for about 2 months. Quick and working great so far.

[Bruv119]

I've just added a M2 SSD 240gb,  it sits in a special socket on your Motherboard and is 5x times faster than a traditional SSD.  This one was £40 larger ones up to 1tb will be more.

I think the best setup to have if you were auditing your HD requirements would be;

1 M2 SSD for anything that needs uber speed read/write.
1 large spinny 1-2tb £50,
1 or 2 standard SSD's £20 double it for two.

So for around £100 - £150  you should be good for another 10 years.

Flip a coin for what one to put your OS on.  Mine is on a standard SSD atm.

[Denniss]

M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe ?
Both are a waste of money and space as they are very small and usually slower than larger sisters.
A good and fast SSD is good as system drive, no one who had a SSD as system drive woudl ever want to get back to slowish HDDs.
Avoid SSD who do not have DRAM Cache or those claimng large transfer speeds but are equipped with very slow QLC Flash.
Good SATA drives are Crucial BX300/MX500, Samsung 860 EVO and the twin sisters WD Blue 3D/Sandisk Ultra 3D. They also have cacheless or QLC versions of these drives.

NVMe drives have no such large choice, Samsung 970 Evo Plus and the Corsair Force MP510 are known good and fast SSD - avoid the QLC drives Intel 660p and Crucial P1

[Chalenge]

I was surprised to discover that 512GB SSDs are down to $50 now (ballpark). Be sure to check the failure rate on some of the more affordable drives if you can find those stats.

I'm not ready to give up the capacity available on HDDs (14TB for instance), but when you see 4TB SSDs are down to less than $1,000 it's a good sign of things to come.

[Denniss]

Many manufacturers are switching/upgradig to 96-layer Flash, this offers higher capacity per chip thus bigger SSD for an affordable price.
There are rumors about WD Blue 3D and Samsung 970 Evo Plus 4TB SSDs arriving in the near future

[Bruv119]

M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe ?
Both are a waste of money and space as they are very small and usually slower than larger sisters.
A good and fast SSD is good as system drive, no one who had a SSD as system drive woudl ever want to get back to slowish HDDs.
Avoid SSD who do not have DRAM Cache or those claimng large transfer speeds but are equipped with very slow QLC Flash.
Good SATA drives are Crucial BX300/MX500, Samsung 860 EVO and the twin sisters WD Blue 3D/Sandisk Ultra 3D. They also have cacheless or QLC versions of these drives.

NVMe drives have no such large choice, Samsung 970 Evo Plus and the Corsair Force MP510 are known good and fast SSD - avoid the QLC drives Intel 660p and Crucial P1

m2 nvme,  its hardly a waste of money when used in conjunction with other larger drives.   £40 is peanuts!

how many games can you fit on 240gb? 
if its not a full rebuild just move all games to the new disk and keep your os as is freeing up space.

pembquit  is there any reason you say you only want one drive?? 

[Chalenge]

DCS World Beta with four terrains and not even all of the planes is pushing 150GB. I could add one racing game and smash 240GB easy.

[Bruv119]

i guess the question is then what games does pembquit want to play? 

1tb nvme was 3 times the cost.

[Denniss]

NVMe SSD are a waste of money unless you are working with lots of large videos, images or databases.
As a normal users you are hardly able to take advantage out of the high transfer rates offered by them. Plus if you're reding from or saving to another medium the advantage is zero unless it's another NVMe.
For the price of a 250GB NVMe you typically get double the size of a good SATA SSD.

240GB seems an odd size for a NVMe SSD, at best used by mediocre SSD but not by good Samsung.

[pembquist]

Only one drive for simplicity's sake. The only games I use are MFS, Condor (soaring sim), IL2 (whatever replaced COD TF Mod,) AH3.

Very helpful responses by the way.

My mother board supports SATA III I believe is what it is called. It is a: EVGA P67 SLI

[Bruv119]

so one large standard Sata III SSD seems to be your best bet. 

what are you going to do with windows re-load it onto the new drive? 

Thing with multiple disks is you can have windows on one and have the others do storage.  It's really as simple as right clicking start menu and selecting disk management.

I was thinking you leave your existing OS drive alone and just move all your games etc onto the new SSD you buy. 

Then it should be a 5 minute job.  Not that re-loading windows 10 takes much longer than that.