SSD and storage management advice and tips

[ModerateOsprey]

Hi,

Had a Steam account for years, but never used it much, but I now have a machine to do it justice.

I have 256GB SSD card as its only drive and that is filling fast. I am wondering if anyone has any advice or tips of what works for storing games with an SSD setup.

I know I will have to buy more storage - a nice big traditional drive or, swallow hard, and shell out for another SSD?

Once I have more storage, is it advisable to move my Steam installation to a secondary drive?

I may be answering my own question, as I love the responsiveness of the SSD, but they are costly.

Any tips and advice much welcomed.

[Air]

At the current moment, I'd say that it's most advisable to use a SSD and a HDD in conjunction.
Keep the OS, important/startup programs, and maybe a few games on the SSD but put everything else on the HDD, including redirecting the documents folder and the appdata folder to the HDD.

[TeKraken]

Steam has the option to add more library folders so you could have steam and a couple of your most played games on the SSD and others on the [extra library] traditional HDD.

[rotNdude]

I would purchase a hard drive to store all of your games.

[ModerateOsprey]

Thanks guys, appreciated.

Libraries - big penny drops, thanks for that - will do all that has been suggested here.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

How much space u need? I would think 2TB HDD would be good and they aren't expensive.
Not when u consider u already invested in 256GB SSD.

[Silicon Vampire]

My 240GB chronos has W8.1, apps/drivers,steam and about 10 games w/75GB (30%) free (formatted) and that's about where I am going to run it for operational requirements of SSDs.

I have a 1TB WD Black SATA 6.0 and the SSD on an add-on controller for the proper function of the SSD on this old computer and faster access on the 1TB).

A 640GB WD Black on the motherboard SATA 3.0 interface.

An 80GB WD IDE ATA133 for data.

A 16GB USB 3.0 Flash memory for important data backup.
----------------------
this setup seems to work extremely well on this old box.

[ModerateOsprey]

I have been doing some hunting around and am now considering one of these hybrid drives as a 'working' drive and keep essentials on the primary SSD and then, perhaps, a big cheap traditional drive for video and long term storage.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Are you on a laptop?

Western Digital makes a hybrid 120 gb SSD/1TB HHD.

Probably your best shot for a laptop.

Desktop, just get a standard HHD.

My desktop has (2) 120GB SSDs (1 is a 6gb and the other is a 3gb from my old computer) and (1) 1tb Green drive and (1) 3TB green grive.

[TeKraken]

The hybrid drives only have a few gigs (4 or 8?) of SSD in them and they take a few cycles to learn which data should be kept on them, this is okay if you're using the same data again and again...IRC

I would just go SSD with a HDD, the hybrid ones are okay if you don't have space for two drives in my opinion.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by TeKraken:

The hybrid drives only have a few gigs (4 or 8?) of SSD in them and they take a few cycles to learn which data should be kept on them, this is okay if you're using the same data again and again...IRC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642

[TeKraken]

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642

For £200 (the price on the link) you can get a 2TB HDD and a 250GB Samsung Evo and have change.

Though thanks for pointing out that 4 or 8GBs was yesterdays tech.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by TeKraken:

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642

For £200 (the price on the link) you can get a 2TB HDD and a 250GB Samsung Evo and have change.

not on a laptop.

[TeKraken]

Hmm interesting. Still relying on the drive to decide what to cache though.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by TeKraken:

Hmm interesting. Still relying on the drive to decide what to cache though.

There's no question that it's overpriced on the basis of the raw amout of storage you get and the type, it's just that there hasn't been a laptop model that's shipped with two 2.5inch hard drive slots in years that I know of, kind of like how upgradable GPU slots in laptops went from uber-rare to non-existent. Too bad the Macbook Air doesn't use a standard 2.5 slot. Or that would be killer upgrade to the MB Air. The trade offs that laptop owners must make. ><

For desktop user, it would be silly to go with that WD model....unless you have one of those cases that severely restricts what you can put it. Like the factory models from Dell which are arguebly never meant to be tweaked with in the first place.

[Air]

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

Originally posted by TeKraken:

The hybrid drives only have a few gigs (4 or 8?) of SSD in them and they take a few cycles to learn which data should be kept on them, this is okay if you're using the same data again and again...IRC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642

That's not a hybrid drive. A hybrid drive has about 8GB of SSD space that is used together with the HDD to make frequenly accessed files faster to read and write to. That's a dual drive, which acts as a seperate SSD and HDD in one enclosure.