Storage Drive Options for Gaming & Documents

[Germander_Speedwell]

So is a 500GB drive plenty to be running an operating system on?
If i were looking for a sweet spot to split my storage across (mainly photographs/music & gaming files, currently around 450gb worth) where do you think i'd be better going, with a thought to giving myself room to grow over the next few years too:
500GB / 1TB
500GB / 2TB
1TB / 1TB
1TB / 2TB
1TB / 4TB
I had been thinking of selecting the 1TB/2TB Samsung 990 Pro M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W) combo, but happy to take advice! I've only ever run off one drive.

 

[B4zookaw]

I’d go 500GB/2TB. My windows and applications would fit on a 250GB drive easily, so 500GB gives decent headroom. Have the OS drive as fast as you can, and if budget stretches to it, a fast Gen4 drive too. But think 1 TB games drive is verging on being too small these days with larger games coming out.

 

[Scott]

For photos & music, a conventional old-school mechanical drive would do the job nicely. There's no benefit from a faster drive as even the slowest drive can load up an MP3 in less than a second. Same goes for pictures really, you would need to be opting for a super fast slideshow to make use of an SSD

 

[Germander_Speedwell]

For photos & music, a conventional old-school mechanical drive would do the job nicely. There's no benefit from a faster drive as even the slowest drive can load up an MP3 in less than a second. Same goes for pictures really, you would need to be opting for a super fast slideshow to make use of an SSD

I'm looking at a laptop build, probably a recoil 17", so 2 x m.2 drives is my only option. That said i am looking at having my photos and music backed up to an external drive through a docking station, so it's good to know that speed is not of the essence when considering that, thank you. I was just thinking use the second drive for storage in general on the laptop it's self and that would mean combining the photos/music with my gaming files, and speed is ofcourse going to be a priority there.

Here's where i get less confident... to get the fastest possible speeds for the operating system drive i would need to step up from the 500GB 970 EVO to a 1TB 990 Pro - an additional £46 for an extra 500GB of drive (or are we saying 250GB of real terms useable storage on the boot drive?) plus the increase in speed. Is that good value for the additional speed? (500GB 970 = 3500MB/R 3200MB/W vs 1TB 990 =7450MB/R 6900MB/W) £46 doesn't seem much in the grand scheme of things but i don't know how much of a difference there is between the 970 EVO speeds and the 990 Pro speeds in terms of am i going to notice the difference at my level of user experience/knowledge?

 

[Scott]

Moved the posts over to your own thread to continue the discussion.

Can you post up the configuration link to your build, we can take a look.

With regards to what I was referencing with speed, this is only for listening to MP3s and for viewing photos. For transferring, speed makes a huge difference regardless of file type. Backing up TBs worth of information onto a conventional drive will take significantly longer than a SSD or PCIe drive. I just didn't want you mixing drinks. I would always have conventional storage for backup anyway, as it's cheaper for bulk (but that pricing is coming down).

I wouldn't limit yourself to Samsung. Their 990 drives are good, but their 980 drives weren't so good. I was asking for the config link to determine if the options were really restricted as we typically wouldn't advise the Samsung drives regardless.

 

[davhun]

I'm looking at a laptop build, probably a recoil 17", so 2 x m.2 drives is my only option. That said i am looking at having my photos and music backed up to an external drive through a docking station, so it's good to know that speed is not of the essence when considering that, thank you. I was just thinking use the second drive for storage in general on the laptop it's self and that would mean combining the photos/music with my gaming files, and speed is ofcourse going to be a priority there.

Here's where i get less confident... to get the fastest possible speeds for the operating system drive i would need to step up from the 500GB 970 EVO to a 1TB 990 Pro - an additional £46 for an extra 500GB of drive (or are we saying 250GB of real terms useable storage on the boot drive?) plus the increase in speed. Is that good value for the additional speed? (500GB 970 = 3500MB/R 3200MB/W vs 1TB 990 =7450MB/R 6900MB/W) £46 doesn't seem much in the grand scheme of things but i don't know how much of a difference there is between the 970 EVO speeds and the 990 Pro speeds in terms of am i going to notice the difference at my level of user experience/knowledge?

I have just been through this but in my case gaming was not part of the issue. My choice between the 16" recoil and the 16" ionica was therefore the latter. I have done a few tests with my new laptop and am very pleased with it. However, like you, I am thinking that the docking station would be a useful addition.
My suggestion is about the M2 drive choice. When configuring your laptop, first enter a 1TB Samsung 990 PRO as the first drive and a 2TB Samsung 990 PRO as the second drive. Make a note of the system price at the top of the configurator - Let us call it P. (there is no option for a 500GB drive here).
Now change the drives for :-
1TB Solidigm P44 Pro and 2TB Solidigm P44 Pro Cost = P - £81
1TB Solidigm P44 Pro and 2TB Solidigm P41 Cost = P - £104
512GB Solidigm P44 Pro and 2TB Solidigm P41 Cost = P - £132

From mine and other test results I found the Solidigm 1TB drive to be as good as, if not better, than the Samsung. The choice is yours but you could save yourself some money.