Drive Configurations on a new build.....

[NoddyPirate]

Right so - I have reached the point of confusion in terms of my planned Drive layout - probably because of so much discussion on here recently about LR and PS and where to keep what data which I have confused myself with! So would you all mind helping me determine the following as I am having trouble deciphering all the rubbish on my existing single 256GB SSD on my current PC.....and so (more than!) a few question to all you clever clogs!

1) What would you consider to be the approximate max size of a Windows 10 clean install, including drivers and updates and all that. I'm guessing 20-30GB?

2) Over time, how much bigger will Windows realistically get with updates and so on? Maybe another 10 or 20GB on top after a couple of years?

I use a 1TB external Hard Drive to store my photos and larger data - and also use cloud storage as a second backup. However when it comes to programs and games and so on it's no surprise that my 256 GB has no room for anymore useful stuff! For my new build I currently have selected two 500GB M.2 drives and a 2TB HDD - all limited by budget unfortunately. My thinking is:

1) OS and some core programs - like LR and PS and Office and so on, on the first M.2. I should have lots of room to spare on here then for hibernation and restores and pagefiles and all that jazz, plus loads of headroom on top.

2) Then LR and PS data and catalogs (which are MB's rather than GB's), along with a few Steam Games and any other random bits and bobs on the second M.2. Again, I would expect to have 100-200GB to spare on here, even with a fair bit of considered future proofing built in.

3) Then the HDD will be my primary storage for photos mostly and any other personal data and docs - all of which will be backed up to both external drive and the cloud.

Thoughts on the above and any other better, more efficient or more useful setups please!!??!!

 

[NoddyPirate]

Your primary and storage drives are fine. The only question is the second drive for games and whatnot...guess it depends on the type of games you may put on there.....Indie games and the like are quite small so won't use much space...the other end of the spectrum is Call of Duty Warzone (or whatever the newest one is) which uses 175GB alone.

Thanks NurseMorph!

Yeah I gifted MS Flight Sim recently - a bit like a Brick Laying Simulator for a builder, but still a gift is a gift! That is 150GB on it's own..... Assetto Corsa is my next biggest at 36GB.

How do Steam games behave? If they are installed on a second drive and I reinstall the OS on the first drive, do they care? Or will they need to be reinstalled anyyay?

 

[Martinr36]

Steam games are easy to switch between drives, just go to the game in steam and there is a button that moves it for you

 

[NoddyPirate]

If you need to reinstall Windows, and therefore Steam, all you need to do is go into the settings within Steam and change the directory path so it knows where the games are

OK that's great - another reason to stick to my Plan A perhaps!?

 

[NoddyPirate]

So glad you started this thread....I was just looking to see how much room Windows etc uses on my system and noticed my storage drive down to 83GB free!! Need to do some moving around, especially as my main drive has 407GB free

My 256GB has 50GB free - it's amazing how much rubbish and junk gets left lying around. A new build is an opportunity to start fresh with a proper layout!! I wonder will @AgentCooper give awards for the cleanest drive installation in the future too??

Out of interest, does anyone do anything fancy to get rid of the bloatware that comes with W10? You know all the pointless apps and games and so on? Just uninstall then one by one after the OS is in? Or is there a fancier way?

 

[Martinr36]

When i got my laptop i had the 1TB m.2 and a 500 gb SSD in it, I upped the latter to 1 TB the other month................

 

[NoddyPirate]

And what’s the consensus with W10 after your PC arrives - it’s not included in my build but will obviously have W10 on it from testing anyway. Clean install form scratch I guess and reload all drivers and everything, yes?

 

[Bigfoot]

This is an interesting thread for me as well. I am entering the ‘should I amend my build?’ phase of pre-production. I currently have 2x 500 GB Samsung 980s - 1 for OS and programmes and 1 as a scratch disk and for LR catalogue and other files. I also have a 2TB SSD that was intended to be for my photos and a 4TB HDD for other files - documents, family tree data, backup files for LR, etc. I have a cloud backup service and will be getting myself a replacement external drive for a local backup. My current pc has 2 slow HDDs, one for OS and programmes, the other for photos, LR catalogue, documents, etc. I currently have over 500GB of photos and that will only get longer. Could I have a better drive setup? I don’t mind spending a bit more, if it is worthwhile, but I don’t want to waste money on something I don’t need.

 

[Bigfoot]

And what’s the consensus with W10 after your PC arrives - it’s not included in my build but will obviously have W10 on it from testing anyway. Clean install form scratch I guess and reload all drivers and everything, yes?

I think that is the best option. There is no guarantee that the Windows installed for testing will work properly or have all the latest drivers installed.

 

[Martinr36]

And what’s the consensus with W10 after your PC arrives - it’s not included in my build but will obviously have W10 on it from testing anyway. Clean install form scratch I guess and reload all drivers and everything, yes?

Yes and Yes on your fastest drive

 

[Martinr36]

This is an interesting thread for me as well. I am entering the ‘should I amend my build?’ phase of pre-production. I currently have 2x 500 GB Samsung 980s - 1 for OS and programmes and 1 as a scratch disk and for LR catalogue and other files. I also have a 2TB SSD that was intended to be for my photos and a 4TB HDD for other files - documents, family tree data, backup files for LR, etc. I have a cloud backup service and will be getting myself a replacement external drive for a local backup. My current pc has 2 slow HDDs, one for OS and programmes, the other for photos, LR catalogue, documents, etc. I currently have over 500GB of photos and that will only get longer. Could I have a better drive setup? I don’t mind spending a bit more, if it is worthwhile, but I don’t want to waste money on something I don’t need.

I'd drop the 2TB SSD as photos don't need a high speed drive and maybe replace it with a 2TB HDD, or just put photos on the 4TB that you'[ve already got and don't forget you can also run external HDD's

 

[ubuysa]

This is an interesting thread for me as well. I am entering the ‘should I amend my build?’ phase of pre-production. I currently have 2x 500 GB Samsung 980s - 1 for OS and programmes and 1 as a scratch disk and for LR catalogue and other files. I also have a 2TB SSD that was intended to be for my photos and a 4TB HDD for other files - documents, family tree data, backup files for LR, etc. I have a cloud backup service and will be getting myself a replacement external drive for a local backup. My current pc has 2 slow HDDs, one for OS and programmes, the other for photos, LR catalogue, documents, etc. I currently have over 500GB of photos and that will only get longer. Could I have a better drive setup? I don’t mind spending a bit more, if it is worthwhile, but I don’t want to waste money on something I don’t need.

IMO you probably don't need the 980 speed for a scratch/catalogue drive and might be able to save some cash (and not notice any difference in performance) dropping to a slower M.2 NVMe drive, or even an M.2 ACHI SSD. Of course, if you can afford it then stick with the two 980s.

I'd drop the 2TB SSD as photos don't need a high speed drive and maybe replace it with a 2TB HDD, or just put photos on the 4TB that you'[ve already got and don't forget you can also run external HDD's

I think it depends on the resolution of the photos. High resolution photos (even 1080p) do benefit from the loading speed of an SSD, it avoids the screen paint you can sometimes get with an HDD. Again though, this doesn't need to be a blistering fast NVMe drive like a 980, even a SATA SSD would be plenty fast enough for photos. You're right though that pretty much everything else will be fine on an HDD.

 

[NoddyPirate]

My intention is to import my RAW files (at around 25MB each) onto my M.2 initially before triaging and deleting the non-keepers. Then I will create previews for LR to work with so I can continue with my edits. The originals can then be moved to the HDD for storage while I continue to edit using the catalog previews. LR doesn't actually need access to the originals for editing them. However, I was unsure how it behaves when exporting files to a new format such as JPEG - so I ran a quick test just now to confirm - @Bigfoot you may be interested in this.....

LR references the original file when exporting it by adding the edits from your catalog to the original as it creates the new file to export. If the original is unavailable or offline, it will use the preview if one is available. If there is no preview available then it is unable to export using catalog data alone. So access to the original files is needed for export.

So this means that the original files on my HDD will need to be accessed when I am exporting them with LR after I am done editing them. I don't mind that this process will be using the slower drive as my work is done at this stage and I don't export more than a few images at time - what I really need to be quicker is the editing process - which will be super fast with the catalog on my M.2.

However if you were to be exporting large amounts of files from LR in one go, then having originals on an SSD or M.2 drive would certainly speed that process up. HDD long term storage will be fine for my workflow and budget - but if you export large numbers of files from LR at a time, then a faster drive may help......

(My external drive which I currently use for storage is a USB 3.0 device in a USB 2.0 port - which currently gives me 25 MB/s access so even a standard 7200RPM HDD will seem like light speed in comparison! I'll be about 7 or 8 times faster I hope!!!)

 

[NoddyPirate]

So would my two M.2 setup seem reasonable to everyone here? OS and core programs on 1st - Steam games and other less used apps and stuff on 2nd?

 

[NoddyPirate]

Thanks folks! 👍

And another quick Q - my mobo with have PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 M.2 slots. Which is best in the fastest slot? OS and core stuff or Steam games and other stuff?

Both of my M.2 drives will initially be identical and incapable of even PCIe 3.0 speeds, so I’m thinking more from an easier future upgrade point of view. Which brings me to my final question of the day! Phew!

I was thinking I might not be able to tell which drive is which during W10 install - so I could just take out the 2nd one so I know I’m installing on the correct one. Simple solution or is there an easier way? Or am I imagining an issue I won’t actually have!? 😀

 

[Bigfoot]

Like you @NoddyPilot I won’t be exporting large numbers of files at one time. My main desire is to have fast editing where the changes don’t lag and the ability to export to Photoshop, which won’t work on my current machine. I also have some Topaz Labs AI plug ins that can be used standalone or from LR or PS. These won’t be used all the time, but only on selected images. I do group similar pictures and triage them, processing only the best (in my opinion) examples. I do flag the bad ones for deletion, but never actually delete them, as I don’t have a shortage of storage. Currently my photos are 24MP Canon raw files, but could be bigger in the future, if I justify buying a new camera body. I do the occasional panoram.

 

[NoddyPirate]

I just hope my HDD isn't noisy! It's been a while since I've had one in my machine. Reading and writing noise doesn't bother me at all as it won't be happening that often. Hopefully it won't be a 7,200 RPM helicopter in the middle though!!

I see the dispatch times have begun to reduce on the main site - down to 26 days from 29 last week - and almost half dispatched within 21 days now too which is great(was just 4% previously). There must have been a flurry of work done at PCS.

My build date was 22nd, moved to the 18th, then back out to the 22nd - should get another update tomorrow and fingers crossed it will be this week. Time to finalise my storage drive plans me thinks!

 

[NoddyPirate]

My PC just went into building now. Hooray! Only 11 working days. Can't complain about that!!!

Now, even if FedEx take 3 weeks to deliver - which they probably will! - I'll still have it sooner than I expected. Yippee!!

 

[Bigfoot]

My PC just went into building now. Hooray! Only 11 working days. Can't complain about that!!!

Now, even if FedEx take 3 weeks to deliver - which they probably will! - I'll still have it sooner than I expected. Yippee!!

No chance to finalise your drive plans then? I am still thinking about mine and wondering whether to step down from a 5900x to a 5800x, as this might speed up the build time. Also, according to Puget Systems benchmarking, the 5800x is at least as good as the 5900x for LR and PS and now a lot cheaper. Previously the price gap between the two was much smaller.

 

[NoddyPirate]

No chance to finalise your drive plans then? I am still thinking about mine and wondering whether to step down from a 5900x to a 5800x, as this might speed up the build time. Also, according to Puget Systems benchmarking, the 5800x is at least as good as the 5900x for LR and PS and now a lot cheaper. Previously the price gap between the two was much smaller.

No, I think after some reflection I am happy with my drive plans. I sat down and totted up the size of all my current installs, added likely additions for the next year or two - and threw a decent overhead capacity on there - and I think all should be well for now. I'll be putting some cash away for the next year or two for upgraded storage depending on needs - as it will be a doddle to add it to the build as required. Assuming of course I still have an income - which is looking less and less likely as time goes by.

It's a tough call on your CPU @Bigfoot . I do find some of the discussion on other threads interesting on this topic - there is a personal value to having your PC in hand rather than waiting and that value can't be easily dismissed. I didn't select the 5600X initially as it was on pre-order - and I didn't have any idea when it would be in stock and didn't want to wait. When it showed in stock later I then amended my order - happy that it most likely shouldn't affect my build time. (Not guaranteed of course)

Others will scoff and dismiss my lack of patience, but each to their own I say. But despite that, if I were you, I would personally sit tight for a bit longer, see how things move along and keep reading up on what you really want vs what those CPU's can give you. Don't 'settle' unless the alternative wait time is likely to defeat it's own purpose and you just can't justify waiting any longer. I think things might begin to move a little quicker shortly......