Hey folks,
So I'm considering going all SSD pretty shortly. I'm doing a rather major cleaning / rewiring / re-layout of my gaming computer next week and I'm taking the opportunity to re-evaluate my approach to use it.
Right now my storage solutions are as follows:
- 250gb SSD (C:\) Samsung 850 EVO with Windows, productivity programs and all Blizzard Games I play. 83GB free still
- 120GB SSD #1, an OCZ Vertex 3 with half my favorite games (all Steam). The was my first SSD. 4gb free
- 120GB SSD #2 with OCZ Vertex 3 with the other half of my favorite games (all Steam)10gb free
- 1TB WD Black HDD 7200RPM with the bulk of my steam library (games I play occasionally and the other huge, 50gb games), Origin, and some other misc games. 250gb free
- 3TB WD Green HDD 5400RPM with my work on it, my music, my books and most importantly, my huge movie and TV collection, making up 1.8TB of the drive's 3TB space. 375gb free
So that's 5 drives, 3 SSDs, 2 HDDs, for a total of 4.5TB, of which 500gb is SSD.
Here is a spacesniffer image of my drive so you can see the breakdown:
http://imgur.com/6oczjK2
Right now my usage approach is:
Total Games (across all drives) = 688gb+100gb+100gb+84gb +80= 1052gb
Movies + Comics = 1.4tb + 400gb = 1.8tb
Music = 95gb
Work and personal related files = ~100gb.
So minus movies and comics, the total comes to 1.247TB
I'm trying to rethink my approach and am wondering about people's advice/experiences in making an all-SSD shift or consolidaitng drives down from 5. I build computers for my guild regularly (they buy the parts, send them to me, I build, send to them) and have become pretty envious of the simplicity of the all-SSD approach I've been doing for them (a single 500gb SSD), which is more than enough considering how guildies use it. 5 drives means more power connectors and an untidy internal design. As far as everyday usage goes, I don't like how everything is spread out with games on 4 of the 5 drives, media in all different places and so forth.. I don't like having two hard drives taking up physcial space in the case where I could tuck the SSDs (a Corsair Vengeance C70). The performance between the 1TB WD Black and 3TB Green are very close, so I could ditch either one in theory, if I can re-think how I use them.
Although I'd like to go all SSD, a consulation prize if that is unfeasible would be to consolidate into one HDD (probably the green) from the two and do something about the two small SSDs.
One option is I could replace the two 120GB Vertex 3s with a 500gb SSD. That would cost $150. I'd consolidate the 2x120gb with AAA games onto one drive, and move to it some of the AAA games currently the 1TB WD Black and remove the WD Black, I'd drop from five drives to three (the 250gb SSD, the 500gbSSD and the 3TB Green) if I did nothing else. That would be a shift from 4.5TB of space with 500g being SSD to 3.75TB of Space with 750gb being SSD. It would be "more elegant" at the cost of 750gb of space, and I'd have to be more selective with what I had installed. Simply having a 50gb game I installed play very rarely wouldn't be an option anymore.
Getting rid of both the HDDs (losing 4TB of my total 4.5TB) and replacing them with a 500GB SSD may be possible. I'd have to be even more selective about my games I install and uninstall. And I'd have to keep my 50gb of work and 100GB of iTunes music on an SSD, but that's fine. The biggest shift would be moving the green drive to my other computer, and playing moves over Plex, from the neighboring computer over the network. Worth it you think?
Regardless, I think my goal is, I'd like to go from 5 drives to 3, do something about the 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs and not drop an extraordinary amount of money in the process. The "nuclear" option is to get a 500gb SSD ($150) and a 6GB WD Blue ($200), but I'd prefer to hold off on that unless I had no choice. My 3TB green should be enough IF I do indeed need to keep a drive, if I use it differently/smarter. But that 1TB Black and the two 120gb SSDs have got to go.
SO let's talk specific questions now that I kind of explained how I use it and some options:
-Am I archaic and doing something pointless in 2016 by having a massive movies/tv folder (mostly h.265 at that), especially one located within my main desktop when I can put it into the one next to it? What are my options (beyond subscribing to netflix?). Solving this would reduce the "space requirement" by 1.6TB
-Am I wrong for wanting to rid myself of the old 2x 120gb SSDs (as in, any SSD is an SSD worth putting in a computer)?
-Am I creating a needless problem for myself I'm attempting to solve by mostly throwing money at by keeping an absolutely huge amount of steam games (including large 30-50gb games) installed? Do people not do this / is it a bad computer usage habit now days? How do you keep your games library?
-Is it really worth taking the dive from a 3tb Green to a 6tb blue for $200 given what I wrote above?
-If I went a 250gb SSD +500gb SSD + 3TB HDD route, what would be some useful organizational rules / approaches? Especially with regards to movies and games
- Instead of the nuclear option of buying a 500gb SSD ($150) and a 6TB HDD ($200), what about just spending $300 on a 1TB SSD instead and going with the 250+1TB SSDs + 3TB HDD? Would that be a better, more future proof way of doing things?
-And the biggest question of all, is there anyway for ~$300 or less, with my 250gb SSD, my two 120gb SSDs, and either a 500gb SSD or a 1TB SSD, of going all-SSD (in some combination), and via some organization / software approach, not feel completely starved for space? One option would be 250GB+120GB+120GB+1TB = 1.5TB of pure SSD space. With a minus-movies/comics usage of 1.2tb, that would leave me with ~300gb of free space. With some better rules for how I keep games, I could stretch that further. Thoughts?
Thanks for reading as I try and logic through this. Looking forward to any ideas/advice/experience.