Space Dilemma with 9150

So as you know you can have a primary hard drive and a second one in the optical disk drive bay.

The question from me is, should I stick with the optical drive and get and external hard drive and have a SSD as my primary OR should I get an external disk drive and put a hard drive in my optical drive bay with my SSD as my primary?

I want use use the secondary bigger drive for storing music, movies, and other stuff that isn't nessasary to store on a SSD since I'm only using a 128 gb SSD.

I'm new to gaming rigs and SSD. Drives so any advice on this subject or anything pertaining to it would be very helpful (like what to download on the SSD and what to programs I put on the HDD).

 

Internal hdd without doubt. 128gb for all your programs isn't much, and optical drives are rarely used these days.

 

110% support

 

Both of his options include the use of a Primary SSD . I think he should stick with the SSD as it will reduce boot times to under 20 seconds, as opposed to around a minute using an HDD. It will also improve the load times of any games you put on the SSD. Most people recommend SSD as the first big upgrade, over a faster processor and ram even.

OP I would recommend using a secondary HDD in the optical bay and getting and external optical drive. The reason for this instead of your other option is because you will need to access the secondary HDD much more often then you would a disk drive, as these days most games install onto the HDD anyways. Think about how often you have used your optical drive recently. That should give you the answer.

 

It's very common to have this setup.
As an indication of space usage, my 256gb ssd has about 50gb or so left. That is with a few games, which take most of the space, and a few other smaller programs. Most of my data is on the hdd. Of course you can install programs onto the hdd. They will just take more time to load.

 

Alright seems the general consensus is to get the external optical drive.

The only real difference between the 2 options is $45 in difference. The external drive option being cheaper.


Also I don't want a HDD as my primary because the SSD is much faster and I want to use the HDD as a secondary memory storage.

Will I be able to use the HDD and the SSD together in the same laptop? Like download games, music, and movies on my HDD and put my OS on my SSD and other essential programs and still access my games on my HDD? Not sure how that works...

 

Oh, I guess that works. I will go with that then.

Thanks man
Does having 2 internal hard drives increase heat at all?

 

Using multiple drives in one machine is no problem. I would suggest that you leave the ssd with one partition (C drive). The hdd will show up as D drive. When you install something, it will normally ask where you want it to go. You can create folders on the hdd for music, downloads etc. Just make sure programs are set to use those folders rather than the ssd.

edit: no effect on heat. The CPU and GPU are hot components, drives are not.

 

Well, don't forget you have an mSATA slot too. SSD, HDD, and ODD.

It's like having your cake and eating it, too.

 

Well yeah, but why use msata when you can just get a bigger sdd?

 

Bigger in what sense? While I don't think they've made a 512GB SSD yet, there are at least three 256GB models that I know of.

Granted, they're also more expensive. The Crucial M4 256GB is around $170-$200, depending on how lucky you are when you shop. The cheapest 256GB mSATA is $260.

 

512GB Crucial M4 2.5" SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive SSD (CT512M4SSD2) $345 + Free Shipping - Newegg Deals, Coupons and Promos

They have 1TB SSDs if you can afford it too... and that is a Front page deal, so you know it's good. Grab one if you can. I don't need 512GB, too bad i skipped last week's deal of $170 for the 256GB model... didn't expect my laptop to get processed and shipped so fast

 

Yeah that's a possibility too. Xotic pc is showing that they can on put a 80gb SSD in the msata drive. And it wouldnt cost me that much more than the SSD, HDD and external optical drive option.


What's the difference between the msata drive and say a primary hard drive?
I ask because Xotic shows that the msata can be geared towards "smart response technology" or the operating system.

 

Thank you for the reply.
Helped me out completely.

What is the purpose of the msata slot? Now say I wanted to put a SSD in the msata slot. How big of a SSD should I put in it? (40 or 80gb?)

 

I think the SSD as the primary and HDD in the optical bay is the best choice. Then you could just use an external optical drive. Nowadays everything can be downloaded or can be put on a usb drive so you really don't need an optical drive anymore.

 

Meant to say "While I don't think they've made a 512GB mSATA SSD yet..."

I dunno. I like having my optical bay.

 

Ahh okay, you could always invest in an external dvd drive

 

The msata is a small ssd in a separate bay. It can be used as just another drive, maybe for the os, or as a cache drive for the hdd (like a hybrid drive with a bigger cache). That caches commonly used stuff for faster access. The msata slot is sata2 and the main drive bay sata3, which is faster. Msata drives are also more expensive per GB than a normal ssd.
I can't see the need unless you really need a big hdd and an optical in the machine, so it could be used as the boot drive or cache drive. In your current setup, there would be no point.
Msata is a great idea for small laptops, and would be more useful in these machines if it were sata3 and the drives were cheaper.