Replacing a dying HDD containing ONLY games and nothing else - go with SSD or HDD?

[Agilaz]

Hello,

As stated in the title, my Samsung Spinpoint F3 is giving out after 5 years and I'm looking to replace it.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to upgrade this aspect of my rig to an SSD as well, since I'm already using an SSD for my OS and most non-gaming apps.

But then I figured - why pay more for what is essentially just a selective boost to loading times? I never complained about loading times when I was running games off of my SATA II (lol) drive, why would I pay the extra cash now? Here's my reasoning:

With the Samsung EVO 850 250GB being my prime candidate for an SSD and the WD Blue 1TB for an HDD, I think I actually might be better off investing in the HDD because

a) Smaller capacity means I'll spend more time installing, uninstalling and reinstalling games - thus wearing out the SSD faster. Having a spacious HDD means I'll have to do less of that, which saves me time and trouble.

b) Since it'll be gaming only, I did research on what the benefits would be. Turns out it's just better load times. As stated, I never had an issue with loading times on a SATA II 7200rpm HDD, and considering the WD Blue is a SATA III drive there's going to be SOME improvement anyway. Also I don't think investing in an SSD is a good idea just to accomodate the ONE game that does tend to have longer loading times. Lookin' at you, Path of Exile.

c) The lower price of the HDD means I'll also be able to throw in a new fancy keyboard to replace my old Logitech KB120. Just a thought.

With all this in mind, am I correct in my reasoning? Would the HDD truly be the better option for me in this case or am I missing something?

Thank you to whoever reads all this and takes the time to reply.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Yes, go with an HDD as they are better value for money capacity-wise.
You've already got an SSD as the boot drive, but for additional storage, 250GB is going to fill up fast.

 

[rcald2000]

It's a purely financial decision. Figure out the capacity that you need. Then lookup the prices for the SSD and HDD for that size. Personally I went all SSD about 1 1/2 years ago and I've never looked back. I no longer like hard drives because I can't deal with storage media failing. But the flip side of that argument is that steam makes it easy to re-install all your games in case of a failure. Financially a hard drive is a smarter buy, but I just like SSD's, and really hope that I never revert back to HDDs.

 

[Agilaz]

Thanks for your answers, I have decided to with an HDD after all - unfortunately the one I received was DOA (the power connectors were broken) so now I'm waiting for a replacement.