Storage Opinons?

Hi All,

Hope youve all had a good xmas?

My M17x r4 is on its way and should be here on the 28th. Im in the process of ordering extra RAM and HDD's to complete the package, But im alittle stuck. Ive bought a Samsung 840 250gb with the plan to add it to the 500gb drive included and add a 3rd 500gb in the ODD bay.

Ive kind of backed out of that due to how complicated it is to remove the ODD drive and I dont want to be stripping my machine which is brand new.

So I have some options:

1) 250gb SSD with 750gb 7200rpm drive (Requires purchase of the 750gb Disk.)
2) 500gb + 500gb in RAID 0
3) 500gb + 500gb independent

My Steam folder is 312gb and my documents comes to 250gb. If I dont use the SSD it will just stay in my Dell XPS1640.

Thanks
Matt

 

I would go with #1, Install the SSD as a boot drive. And use the 750gb hard drive as a data drive. That's what i do. You can direct steam to install games to your HDD. I would also look into getting a small(32-64gb) mSata SSD to cache the HDD so that your frequently used data is cached.

 

Just ordered a WD black 750gb from amazon as I had some gift vouchers to use. So I've gone with option 1.

 

I never recommend RAID 0 mechanical drives, even if you don't really care. There is now a double chance of your RAID array of failing due to the nature of mechanical drives. Option 1 is the best overall, which I am considering doing (huge C drive SSD + large mechanical HDD).

 

Option 1 for sure to me. As a matter fact, I'm almost running the same configuration with a Samsung 840 SSD but with only 500GB hard drive. Obviously your OS and programs use most frequently gets installed to the SSD and the rest like your Media storage that are space hogger to your hard drive.

 

Thanks guys. I am not a fan of raid0 at all. Little gain for doubling your chance of failing drives. I've ordered the new disk and it should be with me in the new year.

My plan is to just transfer the factory image to the ssd using acronis to save me doing a complete reload.

 

I have to go with Tsunami on this one. Only reason I have RAID 0 drives in my R2 is because I have no NAS and have to store all my movies directly onto drive space. But...I've found unless you have a LOT of games, you don't need a big SSD for your primary drive. If you do have a lot of games, then your SSD will pretty much needs to be 200GB or more. Otherwise, you can live with a 128GB SSD as long as you have the large mechanical drive for storage.

 

I would go with number 1 or 3, I simply don't like RAID unless it's RAID 0.

 

To update you all. The machines arrived ive installed set up number 1 which works really well and does the job nicely.

I aim at a later date to add a 1tb drive in the ODD bay. But for now I will leave it.