2 250gb M.2 SSD Drives or 1 500gb

[hillgww]

I'm looking at the recoil 2 and was wondering if it would be better to get 2 250gb M.2 SSD Drives or 1 bigger 500gb one?

If I had 2 I would put OS + software on one. Everything else on the other. Alternately I just get the 500gb now and then add another down the line.

Would be looking at the WD black either way.

 

[Oussebon]

Everything else on the other

What is everything else? Just files like words documents and your music/video collection? Or games? Adobe CC project files?

 

[ubuysa]

If a 250GB drive is big enough for 'everything else' then performance-wise you'd be better off with two SSD drives, though the performance advantage is only going to be noticeable if you have applications that are heavy disk users. The advantage of a single 500GB drive is that you have a free M.2 slot to upgrade into in the future.

 

[Oussebon]

I'm wondering if, depending on what everything else turns out to be, whether the most economical option in terms of cash and vacant M.2 slots will be a 256gb SSD for OS etc and an HDD for documents.

 

[hillgww]

What is everything else?

Based on my current PC storage (500gb sata SSD) a two disk set up would look like:

Disk A:
90gb - work files (Mostly Photoshop, Captivate, After Effect & Audition)
90gb - music & video (about 40% could move to external drive).
20gb - documents.
(Total: 200gb/250gb)

Disk B:
60gb - Windows
80gb - Programme & data files (includes a few games)
(Total: 140/250gb)

+100gb of other random stuff that I have acquired over 5years of laptop usage that will probably get deleted/moved to an external HDD.

 

[Oussebon]

I would probably have suggested a single 500gb SSD for Windows, programs, games, and your photoshop projects etc, and an internal HDD for all other docs.

On the grounds that it's probably easier and less time consuming to have a single drive than to have to juggle space between 2 SSDs.

The 960 Evo is significantly faster than the WD Black PCIe SSD.

 

[ubuysa]

I'm wondering if, depending on what everything else turns out to be, whether the most economical option in terms of cash and vacant M.2 slots will be a 256gb SSD for OS etc and an HDD for documents.

I agree. IMO, and considering the relative costs of HDD/SSD, this is still the best option from a performance/cost point of view. User data generally doesn't benefit that much from being on an SSD anyway and videos and music gain absolutely no benefit from an SSD at all. Music and videos in fact should only ever be on an HDD, and because of their sequential read characteristics they should probably be on the slowest HDD in your system (even if that's a 5400rpm drive).

 

[hillgww]

Thanks for the advice. Will get a 2tb HDD and leave 1 slot empty. Will still get a 500gb SSD as 250 is just a bit too small as I sometimes work with 20gb+ projects and it's nice to be able to have the project CACHE on an SSD.

Will get the EVO 960 as it's not that much more. Thanks for the heads up.

Now time to wait for the Recoi II to come into stoc