Are two 2tb drives better than a single 4tb drive?

[Desktopstu]

As per the title are two smaller drives better than one these days? For example two Lexar NQ790 2tb, would this be better for general use in windows, games storage and moving files around for work, would this be any better than a single Lexar NQ790 4tb drive with the same (on paper) speeds?

A single 4tb drive saves around £40 i think, but having two drives with their own controllers, would that be beneficial in any way?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

This will slightly benefit you in terms of data safety as you now have one more SSD to have failed. You also might use one SSD as a huge USB stick whilst not losing the ability to work with the PC because you got an OS on a different drive. Other than that, performance wins are minimal if they even exist. At 40 pound difference, I'd get a couple used HDDs for backups for saved money though.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Outside of data safety as mentioned, there are no benefits if the cost of the larger drive is lower.
Note that you can partition drives, so you can turn that 4 TB drive into two 2 TB partitions if that makes it easier to keep track of your data.

 

[AusWolf]

It depends. By installing your Steam library onto a separate drive, you won't have to reinstall your games with a Windows reinstall. But then, it holds true even if you just divide one drive into two partitions.

The situation is different if you have the two drives for extra speed, as in RAID 0, or extra safety in the instance of drive failure, as in RAID 1.

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

IMHO, both are arguably fine. though I'd stay away from QLC, especially the ones you mentioned, I did read a review of those drives to be "inconsistent" and as well doesn't really last long, if I were to recommend better get the NM790.

 

[agent_x007]

Having one more M.2* drive, means one less free M.2 for future expansion.
*Assuming, you aren't "stealing" PCI-e lanes from some PCI-e port or SATA controllers, for that M.2 to work.

Short version : Unless you plan on using second drive for redundancy (how valuable is data you plan to store on them, is up to you), there is no point in going two half capacity drives vs. single big one.

EDIT : If you need MBR initialized drive for retro PC or whatever other reason, both 2TB drives will be fully accessible. However, 4TB one will be limited to ~3,5TB.

 

[DaemonForce]

I can adopt the philosophy of g3x4 single or g4x4 M.2 RAID and I see nothing wrong with either. A volume can fail but will it really?
I treat M.2 drives as performance oriented storage and a long term solution that can revive my servers at EOL or fast portable storage.
My Steam/Epic/other libraries already exist off the system in the form of HDD storage over iSCSI and they're not going anywhere.
Maybe blockchains and DMM locations can be used the same way too but it's not a priority.
The M.2 arrangement I use now is a single 240GB Corsair MP510 maxed at g3x4 and it's quite worn.
When finished it will either fail in some non-spectacular way or get moved into a server until it does.

You'll have to go to someone else about "better" for games as I don't adopt M.2 storage for that storage philosophy.

 

[Desktopstu]

Having one more M.2* drive, means one less free M.2 for future expansion.
*Assuming, you aren't "stealing" PCI-e lanes from some PCI-e port or SATA controllers, for that M.2 to work.

Short version : Unless you plan on using second drive for redundancy (how valuable is data you plan to store on them, is up to you), there is no point in going two half capacity drives vs. single big one.

EDIT : If you need MBR initialized drive for retro PC or whatever other reason, both 2TB drives will be fully accessible. However, 4TB one will be limited to ~3,5TB.I weas considering whether having two drives running

I was curious as to whether two drives, each with their own controller, can access data faster than a single drive. Think my curiousity is heading down a blind alley though.

 

[JWNoctis]

I was curious as to whether two drives, each with their own controller, can access data faster than a single drive. Think my curiousity is heading down a blind alley though.

They absolutely will, but it rarely matters for real-world usage. One of the only real use case is if your workload involved large amount of file copying. Copying between two drives is much faster than copying within the same drive, albeit even the latter is usually fast enough for most.

But then again, empty slots are CPU and/or chipset PCIe lanes not utilized, in the sense of being a completionist.

The only other justification I could think of is that 2x2TB drives are usually cheaper than 1x4TB, at least when I got mine. But if the latter is cheaper now...

 

[nomdeplume]

A single 4tb drive saves around £40 i think, but having two drives with their own controllers, would that be beneficial in any way?

Looking beyond what has already been mentioned.

Saving money buying a lower end drive that is used for moving and erasing files on is worthwhile to consider. If you also purchase a higher quality one for storage and other uses that don't impact lifespan and memory management as negatively. SSD do not like having TB of files replaced in a short timespan.

I was curious as to whether two drives, each with their own controller, can access data faster than a single drive. Think my curiousity is heading down a blind alley though.

More than just memory controller should be considered. Firmware or controller of x drive can work better than y drive in some instances on the same system. The reverse can then be true in another program or use case.

Technically, two drives at 100% usage, without PCIe bottlenecks, should be faster. If that rarely encountered circumstance is common for you two drives would be faster.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I was curious as to whether two drives, each with their own controller, can access data faster than a single drive. Think my curiousity is heading down a blind alley though.

4 TB drives tend to be a smidgen slower, but you'd really have to check the specs, as it's not always the case. That said, some companies use TLC NAND up to 2 TB and then swap in slower QLC for the 4 TB SKU, so again, check the specs.

 

[lexluthermiester]

As per the title are two smaller drives better than one these days? For example two Lexar NQ790 2tb, would this be better for general use in windows, games storage and moving files around for work, would this be any better than a single Lexar NQ790 4tb drive with the same (on paper) speeds?

A single 4tb drive saves around £40 i think, but having two drives with their own controllers, would that be beneficial in any way?

Thanks in advance.

For the money you would spend for either the single 4TB SSD or two 2TB SSDs, you could get a good 2TB SSD and a 4TB or 6TB HDD and really give yourself lots of storage. The speed differences would not be enough that you care much. New modern HDDs are really very fast. Only a suggestion as food for thought.

 

[Dorek]

I usually have a couple drives in raid 0 for all general purpose use and they worked fairly fast at least.

 

[Harlow]

One of the only real use case is if your workload involved large amount of file copying. Copying between two drives is much faster than copying within the same drive

Agreed. I have three 1TB M.2 drives in my video editing rig, built in 2022. The first is for Windows and all programs. The second is for Work-in-Progress (some long 4K video files can exceed 50GB) and the third drive is a Scratch disk for Adobe Premiere Pro or Topaz Video AI. I also have a bunch of large hard disks for archive and finished work. Sometimes I use a fast hard disk (8GB 250MB/s) as the Source drive and the 1TB M.2 drive Work-in-Progress drive as the Destination drive for 4K video rendering.

I don't know if separating data streams makes a huge difference, but it keeps me happy. Programs from Adobe, Topaz, etc., have settings for Work disks and Scratch disks, so there should be some advantage. My main bottleneck is the 12GB GTX 3060 for OpenGL/CL work. A GTX 4090 would be three times faster, but cost five times as much as the 3060. In addition, I'd have to remove the 10GBe NIC and the LSI SAS HBA controller, to fit a monstrous card like the 4090.

two drives for extra speed, as in RAID 0

With modern Gen.5 M.2 drives running at speeds in excess of 10,000MB/s (serial read and write), plus the danger of striping data across two or more disks, I really wouldn't recommend RAID0 for M.2 these days. There may be specialist PCIe x16 cards with four or eight M.2 drives that still run RAID, but these aren't intended as permanent storage, just super fast scratch disks.

Many years ago I set up four 320GB Ultra320 SCSI drives in RAID0 as an experiment. Much faster than a normal hard disk, but eventually one of the 32-GB disks died. No data was lost a it was simply a test rig.

 

[chrcoluk]

Pros and cons.

Two drives, need more cables and more ports.
Two drives, need more power, generate more heat in case.
Two drives, if used as separate drives, some what more safety as if a drive dies, you only lose data on that drive.
Two drives, if used as separate drives, isolated partitions so more effort to manage space.
Two drives, can be used as a raid 1 redundant setup at cost of losing half of the space.
Two drives, can be used as raid 0, more performance, but cost of lower data safety, if one drive fails all data lost. Not recommended.
Two drives, can use the other to backup data from the first drive. This is somewhat better than raid 1, as is an actual backup of data, raid 1 would be screwed e.g. if file system became unusable.
One drive, less power, less heat, less cables, less ports, less bays, can make one drive hold all data in one partition.

Its going to come down to personal preference. In my opinion as an added warning the only sensible use case for raid 0 is if you need fast scratch space where if for some bizarre reason NVME isnt fast enough for you.
Raid 1 vs backups, backups is higher effort, you either need to do them manually or put in the effort to automate it, Raid 1 will have two copies of everything you write automatically. Unless you have snapshots, then raid 1 will also have a problem of no ability to roll back to a previous file state.

 

[Harlow]

Pros and cons.

A few of my computers have just one SSD (Windows). If it's M.2 there are no cables involved.
Multimedia PCs have two drives, SSD boot and large (6GB or 8GB) hard disk for storage. One SATA cable and one power cable.
Quite a few of my systems have between 6 and 13 hard disks/SSDs. Lots of heat and lots of cables. Lots of things to go wrong, but think of all the wires in an aeroplane.
My next TrueNAS Core server will have 16 hard disks (if I can get them free). That could mean 100W to 150W of wild heat, but this is less than heat from a mid-range GPU.
Horses for courses. Whatever floats your boat...

Back on track, if you buy two 2TB drives and one fails, you've still got a working drive, even if you can't boot from it because it's data-only.
On the other hand a 4TB drive is cheaper and leaves an M.2 slot free for upgrades.
Answer. Toss a coin. Heads 4TB, Tails 2 x 2TB.

would that be beneficial in any way?

You'll get conflicting answers from different people. There is no "right" decision. Sorry, but only you can decide what's best.

 

[Jetster]

Just ask yourself, would you rather have two partitions or two drives?

 

[Dr. Dro]

No. Buy a high-grade 4 TB drive.

 

[Ruru]

For the thread's topic, yes, if you have data on two drives and one breaks, you still have stuff left.

 

[kapone32]

I have a 4TB NVME and also a RAID 0 4 TB 2x2TB drives. There is literally no difference in performance. The truth though is that it is no longer 2023. As a result once again 4TB NVME drives are stupidly priced. Not that 2 Tb are much better. 1 Tb are still priced competitively but they are also compromised with the size of Games and for people who create media. I would wait for Black Friday before doing anything.

 

[Hardcore Games]

Grab el 8 disk NAS and stuff it with disks in RAID 6 and keep a few spares if you want to use the same disks for years