Single HDD or multiple HDDs, better?

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Brett Williams

Honorable
Apr 28, 2013
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Hello everyone and thank you for taking the time to read this. I was curious that since the phantom 820 case that i'm getting is going to have multiple HDD/SSD slots would i be better off getting like a 1TB HDD and 2 90ish SSDs (1 for games and 1 for OS) or would i be better off getting like a 2 TB and 1 SSD for games and OS or would i be better off getting multiple HDDs like 2 or 3 500 or so GBs and a SSD for OS and games.

Is there a benefit if any to having multiple HDDs or should I just get one big HDD and a SSD. Not looking for monetary answers just the best combo for a super avid gamer/video recorder.
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

Glorious
Feb 10, 2006
11,442
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Having a single large hard drive can cause backups and defrags to take longer. I usually like to have the OS and programs on one drive and data on another drive. This is all a matter of preference and shouldn't effect gaming. If speed is your major goal, then make sure the OS, programs (including games), and any other items that you want to be able to load quickly is on SSD's.

Remember, the only thing effected in games is the speed of load levels. The CPU and GPU determine playabliity and video quality.

I don't do video, so can't say for sure there except it seems a lot of people that do video store them on RAID 0 for faster transfer speeds. SSD's have faster random access times. I'm not sure how well they do on sequential transfers compared to hard drives, but I'm sure Tom's has hardware charts you can take a look at.
 
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manofchalk

manofchalk

Glorious
May 11, 2012
12,914
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It really depends what your doing as to what kind of storage setup you go with.

- If your just a normal user or gamer, go with a decent size SSD (128GB is enough for the OS, most programs and some games) and at least a 1TB HDD for unimportant programs,games and your mass storage like movies, music and documents.

- If you video edit, similar setup to the above except you get an SSD and two HDD's. SSD is obvious, HDD 1 is to hold raw footage, HDD 2 is to be rendered too. This way, no one drive is being hammered during the rendering process and having to multi-task. Optional 3rd HDD to hold any programs/games/mass storage, could probably just use the render drive for this to little ill effect though.

- Or if you record live gameplay, you need a beefy storage setup to handle 1080p recording. This is where RAID comes into play, because 1080p footage at say 45FPS is a lot of data to be recorded very quickly, and you need a good setup to deal with that. Would go for RAID0 HDD's or a dedicated large SSD to be recorded too.
 
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game junky

game junky

Distinguished
Feb 2, 2012
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Agreed - it all depends on what your goal is. I am a gamer and videophile so I have a 256GB Samsung Pro for my OS/Program Files and a 3 TB 7200RPM HDD for my media. Been ripping my entire bluray collection and those files stack up pretty quick. I also backup my OS using drive snapshot to the HDD and have a 3 TB external for backing up my 3 TB media drive. I consider that the ideal setup for me - I get monsterously fast performance, I have tons of space for my media files and I have a redundant copy of my data once a week.
 
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bigcyco1

bigcyco1

Champion
Feb 11, 2012
15,867
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It really depends if it's for gaming i’d definitely suggest going with a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro or 256GB Samsung 840 Pro in combination with a 1TB or 2TB hard drive. This will allow for plenty of hard drive space for storage while OS and application files may be placed on the SSD for that extra top notch performance.
 
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