Is this a good Hard Drive Setup for a Gaming Laptop?

[cedar999]

So I'm customizing a new laptop, and I was wondering what setup I should get. Currently I'm considering these:
Primary Hard Drive:
500GB Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drive
Secondary Hard Drive:
128GB Samsung 840 Pro Series Solid State Drive
and I don't know if I should put this here, but
mSATA Drive:
32GB Crucial Solid State mSATA III

Can you tell me if this is a good setup for a gaming laptop? I'm looking for optimum performance, and I'm looking to see if this can serve me well. Please tell me if I'm doing something downright idiotic. I'm new to all of this hardware stuff.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Frag Mortuus]

I would keep the 500gb SSD for your primary, but I would change your secondary to a regular mechanical drive with a lot of storage. Just because you will eat through that 128gb. You may not think that you will want much storage right now, but I promise that eventually you will wish that you opted to go with more.

Also, excuse my ignorance, but what is an mSata drive?

 

[cedar999]

I would keep the 500gb SSD for your primary, but I would change your secondary to a regular mechanical drive with a lot of storage. Just because you will eat through that 128gb. You may not think that you will want much storage right now, but I promise that eventually you will wish that you opted to go with more.

Also, excuse my ignorance, but what is an mSata drive?

Thanks for your reply - I know that I might eat through that Secondary pretty fast, but the disadvantages of a HDD daunt me - the noise, vibrations, heat, and battery consumption are all pretty much unwanted. However, if it does become necessary to get a HDD, I have two choices in mind. One is the 1,000GB (1TB) 5400RPM (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s) and the other is the 750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Buffer (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s). I'm unsure on whether to get the former (solid storage) and the latter (cache buffer).

I myself am still very unclear on what the M-sata drive does and what Serial-ATA is. Also, one more question. Should I get Raid 0?

 

[J_E_D_70]

Don't need mSATA - that's an SSD cache for a mechanical HDD - if you go all SSD.

If you split the difference, you *could* use a cache but seems like most folks don't.

 

[k1114]

Msata does not have to be cache, some laptops are able to boot from it and/or use it as a regular ssd. If you need more storage, an external hdd will do. I am assuming you would have usb 3 so would be able to get full performance out of it. I wouldn't bother with ssd raid for gaming. Sata is just a connection type, like how usb is a connection, pcie is a connection, etc.

The noise, vibrations, heat, and battery consumption pale in comparison to the cpu and gpu of a gaming laptop. I don't know your other specs but that's like ~3w of a hdd (ssd is at ~1.5w) vs 120+w of a cpu+single gpu. The cooling fans are going to make much more vibration and noise and the cpu+gpu are a lot more heat and power. What are the rest of the specs? Since your are spending that much on storage (the least of the concerns for gaming performance, only affects loading time) then I am assuming a top of the line sli/cf config.

I'm unsure on whether to get the former (solid storage) and the latter (cache buffer).

Every hdd has cache. I'm unsure what you mean by "solid storage," using the word solid would point to an ssd. I'm sure you are confusing the hdd platters as "solid" (don't call it that) and cache. But as said, every hdd has cache so it's between a 1tb 5400rpm vs 750gb 7200rpm, nothing more.

 

[cedar999]

Best answer selected by cedar999.

 

[cedar999]

Msata does not have to be cache, some laptops are able to boot from it and/or use it as a regular ssd. If you need more storage, an external hdd will do. I am assuming you would have usb 3 so would be able to get full performance out of it. I wouldn't bother with ssd raid for gaming. Sata is just a connection type, like how usb is a connection, pcie is a connection, etc.

The noise, vibrations, heat, and battery consumption pale in comparison to the cpu and gpu of a gaming laptop. I don't know your other specs but that's like ~3w of a hdd (ssd is at ~1.5w) vs 120+w of a cpu+single gpu. The cooling fans are going to make much more vibration and noise and the cpu+gpu are a lot more heat and power. What are the rest of the specs? Since your are spending that much on storage (the least of the concerns for gaming performance, only affects loading time) then I am assuming a top of the line sli/cf config.

I'm unsure on whether to get the former (solid storage) and the latter (cache buffer).

Every hdd has cache. I'm unsure what you mean by "solid storage," using the word solid would point to an ssd. I'm sure you are confusing the hdd platters as "solid" (don't call it that) and cache. But as said, every hdd has cache so it's between a 1tb 5400rpm vs 750gb 7200rpm, nothing more.

Wow, I didn't expect this detailed of a reply - thanks a lot.
As I mentioned before, I'm pretty much a novice at this sort of stuff, but I don't want that ignorance to screw things up for me. This reply and all of the other replies really helped out. I guess I'll just go with the 750 gb 7200 with the HDD choice. And then again I don't think I'll notice the noise with the headsets for gaming.