# 500GB SSD vs 240GB + 1TB HDD



## CanadianGamer (Sep 17, 2017)

Can't decide on a 500GB SSD or 240 GB SSD with a 1TB HDD.

My estimates are that about 200GB will be for games, max. I'm sure about 300 GB will be more than enough for extra programs, videos, photo and documents. 500GB is good, eh?

On the other hand, I can store the games on my 240GB SSD, and maybe the OS and a program or 2, and have a LOT of room for more stuff on my HDD, such as photos and videos. I'm a photographer, so I can have hundreds of photos on my PC at times, so I use a laptop with 1TB for that, including Adobe Lightroom, etc. Laptop is still pretty good though, has an i3 and all, but good enough for photo editing.

My main focus is on games though. So what do y'all think? What would you choose, why? Just saying, 500GB SSD and 1TB HDD is overkill for me, and just a bit over budget for storage, tbh.

Thanks,
CanadianGamer


----------



## fizhsmile (Sep 17, 2017)

240gb ssd is enough for me, most people will have 5ish main games installed. most game these days are like 20-30gb. I only have 3 games installed on my ssd (BF1, Overwatch and GTAV). As for hdd, 1tb is plenty enough to store movies music and pictures.


----------



## CanadianGamer (Sep 17, 2017)

fizhsmile said:


> 240gb ssd is enough for me, most people will have 5ish main games installed. most game these days are like 20-30gb. I only have 3 games installed on my ssd (BF1, Overwatch and GTAV). aS FOR hdd 1tb is plenty enough to store movies music and pictures.


I agree. Definitely cheaper too.


----------



## lyndonguitar (Sep 17, 2017)

240GB and 1TB HDD. The OS is the most important thing for an SSD. Games aren't much important, you can get the 240GB and just install the games you play the most~mostly online games like PUBG/Dota, or open world games like GTA V/Fallout 4, as they tend to benefit the most from being installed in an SSD, no need to put the whole library there.

I survived having a 100GB OS drive(with 2-3 games) with tons of TBs of HDD space for many years up until recently when I bought a 500GB SSD. as you've said, you are a photographer. so having photos in an 1TB HDD would be more beneficial as well. It's a waste of SSD space to store photos and videos there. and if you take more HQ photos and edit/photoshop alot of content, 500GB or even 1TB won't be enough


----------



## CanadianGamer (Sep 17, 2017)

All the info I need. I agree with you all very much. Thank you!


----------



## Bill_Bright (Sep 17, 2017)

You did not mention anything about money/budget. In that case, I say go SSD all the way and leave the 60-year-old hard drive technology behind.


----------



## xkm1948 (Sep 17, 2017)

Save up and get a 2TB samsung 850EVO SSD. Problem solved


----------



## Bill_Bright (Sep 17, 2017)

Sorry, I see you did mention budget but my advice remains the same. From the description of your storage needs, it seems 1TB would be plenty.


----------



## StrayKAT (Sep 18, 2017)

Same here going 256/HDD

My only issue is Win 8 and 10 clog a lot of crap in the C/OS drive. If you use their App store especially. There's no way of preventing this except by changing Environment parameters and relocating things like the User folder. This was really stupid on MS' part.


----------



## newtekie1 (Sep 18, 2017)

500GB SSD now, add a larger HDD later if you need it.


----------



## Bill_Bright (Sep 19, 2017)

Deliah Smith said:


> The SSD may help you load the game faster at first, but that's it.


Sorry Deliah, but that is totally not true. Over all computer performance increases if you go all SSD. Hard drives are good for tunes and movies, but SSDs are great for just about everything else. 

Also, not all games are the same. Some are very disk intensive. 

Yes, SSDs still cost more per gigabyte than HDs. But not near as much as HDs used to cost back in the day. And considering SSDs consume less power and have the potential to last years longer than HDs, the cost difference matters much less when you spread those costs  (and energy savings) over the life of the computer. 

I agree, if budget does not allow for all SSD now, then you have no choice but to use the 60 year old technology of big, clunky, noisy, mechanical hard drives. But if the budget allows, or if you can wait and build up the budget, SSD is the way to go.


----------



## lyndonguitar (Sep 19, 2017)

Bill_Bright said:


> Sorry Deliah, but that is totally not true. Over all computer performance increases if you go all SSD. Hard drives are good for tunes and movies, but SSDs are great for just about everything else.


He does mention that "Personally I'd have a SSD 128GB just enough for installing OS and drivers" so I'm pretty sure he knows that overall computer performance increases.

Anyway, I think you are hating too much at hard drives and that they're old, big, clunky and 60 years old. There is nothing wrong with Hard Drives for storing data. You should never just have a big ass SSD for everything unless you want to waste lots of money.  yes SSDs improve overall performance but seeing that he is a photographer, which will involves lots of photo/video and editing work, he will definitely need a big space, and for that job, an HDD(coupled with an SSD boot drive) would suffice and would actually be the better option.  plus what if he stores a lot of music, movies, and the like, definitely not worth the SSD space.(for him)

250SSD is already plenty of space for OS, most used apps and most played games. and even then, only a few games benefit a lot with an SSD. no point in going full SSDs and wasting money. Ofcourse, if money's not a problem, SSDs are always better, but that's not the case unfortunately. so he must pick the cost effective option for him. If someone wants him to go full 1TB SSDs instead, It's like telling someone who's choosing between an i7 and an 1600x 'go get an i9 its better'


----------



## RejZoR (Sep 19, 2017)

If you need capacity AND speed, do the following.

Buy:
- PrimoCache software
- 128GB SSD
- 1TB HDD

This way you'll have 1TB of total storage at near SSD speeds across entire 1TB. Frankly, you should be fine with 128GB SSD at such small HDD size. Essentially, what you'll get with this is same as SSHD or Intel's Optane, but with enormously larger SSD cache. It's just not system dependant and if anything goes bad on SSD (cache) side, HDD remains untouched and accessible like nothing happened (if SSD fails).

Forget about boot drive nonsense, this is the stuff people should look for more. PrimoCache will intelligently speed up stuff you use the most by itself.


----------



## lyndonguitar (Sep 19, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> If you need capacity AND speed, do the following.
> 
> Buy:
> - PrimoCache software
> ...


interesting. I have an extra 128GB SSD here with nothing in it. might do something with it now thanks.

but then, there's not much to gain anymore from it if you are just storing videos or photos. but for games/I/O intensive apps installed on an HDD. it would be a great help indeed


----------



## Bill_Bright (Sep 19, 2017)

lyndonguitar said:


> There is nothing wrong with Hard Drives for storing data.


Storing data is not the same thing as running all your programs from a SSD. I use HDs to back up my data and keep image copies of my SSDs. 


lyndonguitar said:


> You should never just have a big ass SSD for everything unless you want to waste lots of money.


First, I never said or implied you should have "a" (as in a single) SSD. You should never have a single drive (HD or SSD) for any computer as your only storage or data device.

As for wasting money, that is a very subjective term. Many would be totally right to say spending big money on $200 motherboards, expensive RAM, graphics cards, or CPUs just to play games on a computer is a waste of money when a top of the line PlayStation or XBOX cost under $500. 


lyndonguitar said:


> If someone wants him to go full 1TB SSDs instead. It's like telling someone who's choosing between an i7 and an 1600x 'go get an i9 its better'


No its not. There's no such thing as an inexpensive i9. Even the least expensive i9 cost more than many are willing to spend on an entire computer. SSDs cost more, but not near that much more. 

Again, this is all subjective. What some may say is a limited budget is a small fortune for others. You certainly don't have to buy the most expensive 1TB SSD out there. Not everything is based on cost alone. Other factors affect the value. Even the slowest SSD will run circles around the fastest HD. SSDs also consume less power, generate less heat, make no noise, have a longer life expectancy, take up less space, and weigh less too. 

I would never try to convince anybody that HDs are the better option. They just aren't. And I don't hate HDs. But unless the purchase MUST be now and the budget does not support all SSDs now, it does make sense to go with current technologies. IMO, buying just a 250GB SSD today and holding off until the budge allows for larger secondary SSD later is better than buying a larger HD as secondary drive now. That, IMO, would be a waste of money.


----------



## lyndonguitar (Sep 19, 2017)

Bill_Bright said:


> I would never try to convince anybody that HDs are the better option. They just aren't. And I don't hate HDs. But unless the purchase MUST be now and the budget does not support all SSDs now, it does make sense to go with current technologies. IMO, buying just a 250GB SSD today and holding off until the budge allows for larger secondary SSD later is better than buying a larger HD as secondary drive now. That, IMO, would be a waste of money.



He is really limited by budget, that's why he's asking for a choice between the two. Yes, he could get just the 250GB. or even the 500GB because its more future-proof. but for someone who is a photographer(he didn't have to say it if it wasn't a factor on his decision)... he definitely needs an HDD in his system(I was under the impression that he didn't have the luxury of already having extra storages available to store files.). If he bought just 250GB SSDs now. it will run out quickly. and he'll buy a secondary SSD as per your suggestion, and again restrained by budget, will probably buy another 250GB or 500GB, If he just bought a 1TB hard drive he wouldn't even be buying secondary SSDs yet. IF he runs out of space, just buy a bigger HDD for a cheaper price.

Anyway I'm all for SSDs. If I had the money I would get a 1TB SSD instead of a 500GB one.


----------



## Bill_Bright (Sep 19, 2017)

I think you are making a lot of assumptions and conclusions based solely on speculation because the OP has not provided us much information in the way of his actual budget or storage requirements. 

100s of photos, for example, even high resolution photos, can easily fit in just a few gigabytes of space. I just ran *dir *.jpg /s* to list every jpg file on my c drive and came up with 5469 files. They took up just 318,644,714 bytes (318.6MB). Listing all .png files listed another 7941 files for 142.6MB and many of those are high resolution (1836x3264) images.


----------



## Sasqui (Sep 19, 2017)

Same sort of dilemma here, I went with a 500GB 850 EVO SSD and 1TB HDD ... depending on what I'm working with vs. what I need to retrieve, most data will be on the 1TB drive and everything else (programs mostly) on the SSD.

Here's the 500GB SSD drive on my work laptop.  There's some data on it, but only on the order of roughly 50Gb:


----------



## RejZoR (Sep 19, 2017)

lyndonguitar said:


> interesting. I have an extra 128GB SSD here with nothing in it. might do something with it now thanks.
> 
> but then, there's not much to gain anymore from it if you are just storing videos or photos. but for games/I/O intensive apps installed on an HDD. it would be a great help indeed



Try it out. PrimoCache has a free trial so you can see how it works. It's also really cheap if you decide to buy it and my experience with support was also great. I think it's even lifetime license iirc. Haven't used it for a while since now I'm on full SSD. But it worked great when I had 128GB M.2 SSD paired with 2TB HDD. Boot time and game load times were basically the same as now on SSD. I just prefer absolute silence now, which is why I went into such expensive investment.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 4, 2017)

Get a 256 GB drive MX300 or 850 Pro for OS, then a larger drive 7200 RPM atleast


----------



## thebluebumblebee (Oct 4, 2017)

Another option:
A 500 GB SSD is going to cost you ~$200CN, but everyone is going to try to convince you to go for the M.2 960 EVO which costs $300.  A 2 TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD gives you more storage, adequate performance and the 8 GB cache accelerates boot times and often used programs for less than $150.


----------



## AlienIsGOD (Oct 4, 2017)

i use a 120gb ssd for OS, 240gb ssd for Blizzard games and a 1TB HDD for everything else.  I would upgrade the 240 to a 580/500gb if i had the chance though


----------



## yotano211 (Oct 4, 2017)

Nothing wrong with a small SSD and a HD. A normal HD is fast enough for most people.


----------



## Bill_Bright (Oct 4, 2017)

thebluebumblebee said:


> but everyone is going to try to convince you to go for the M.2 960 EVO which costs $300.
> A 2 TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD gives you more storage, adequate performance and the 8 GB cache...


Everyone? Not hardly. I sure am not. I see little need to get the fastest SSD out there. Just a decent SATA SSD is fine, and provides much more than just "adequate performance". If the board supports M.2 and you find a good deal on a M.2 SSD, then go for it. But I sure am not going to try to convince anyone to go that route. 

And where are you seeing a 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD with "8GB" cache? It is more like "64MB" cache, as seen here.


----------



## thebluebumblebee (Oct 4, 2017)

Bill_Bright said:


> And where are you seeing a 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD with "8GB" cache? It is more like "64MB" cache, as seen here.


https://www.techpowerup.com/227128/seagate-introduces-the-5th-gen-firecuda-sshds-up-to-2-tb-8gb-nand


Bill_Bright said:


> Everyone?


Why not spend the extra $100 for a SSD that's 3 times as fast?  Or so the argument goes....


----------



## Jetster (Oct 4, 2017)

Just keep in mind. When a SSD fails. It fails. HD tend to die slowly so good for back ups


----------



## Bill_Bright (Oct 4, 2017)

Jetster said:


> Just keep in mind. When a SSD fails. It fails. HD tend to die slowly so good for back ups


I don't see this as a valid justification. All drives WILL fail - eventually. But a HD, being highly mechanical, is likely to fail long before a SSD will. Regardless, all data should be backed up using multiple backup plans - regardless the drive type. So whether the secondary drive is a SSD or a HD, its data should be backed up to yet another backup device, the cloud, optical disks, or all of the above.


----------

