Games starting to 'require' an SSD

[Randy Lahey]

Needless to say im not happy about this. First Starfield wants $120 AUD for the normal edition in australia, now they are, as well as CD Projekt with Cyberpunk, demanding you have a SSD to play the game. I have 2 m.2 SSDs in my laptop which i barely have any space left on. So with most of my games i install them to an external HDD and plug them into my laptop when i want to play them.

Which saves time having to redownload 100GB+ games at 4MB/second. Prices for decent size SSD m.2s are still far from affordable for most of the general public if you want something more than a terabyte. $200-250 for 2TB, $500 for 4TB, nearly $2000! for 8. If they want to make these demands on consumers who in the current day of near hyper-inflation, maybe they should work together with samsung and intel etc to bring the price of the m.2s that they demand you buy to play they're overpriced games, to a reasonable level (at least half of what it currently is).

[Shaggy]

Those are just the times we live in. In the not so distant future your average gaming PCs won't have a mechanical HDD..

[Cream Tea]

I still don't trust SSDs although my newest PC that I built does have a 512gb SSD for the operating system because Windows 10 is so overbloated now that running it on an HDD is actually painful. I intend to get another HDD for general storage.

[Cathulhu]

Why don't you trust SSDs? They have proven themselves time and time again already.

[Cream Tea]

When an HDD begins to die you can usually tell it's nearing the end and even if it dies there are ways of recovering the data. When an SSD begins to die you don't really notice until it's too late and when it fails that's it you've lost everything.

[Wolfpig]

You know.....if a game states it needs an ssd that does not necessarily mean that it wants an nvme drive (otherwise it would say so) as solid state drives start with the common sata ones.....

And no one forces you to install hundred of games at the same time, so it is not necessary to have dozen of tb on your pc....

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by dalmatian700:

CD Projekt with Cyberpunk, demanding you have a SSD to play the game. I have 2 m.2 SSDs in my laptop which i barely have any space left on. So with most of my games i install them to an external HDD and plug them into my laptop when i want to play them.

For Cyberpunk in the "Recommended" specs section it literally says:

Additional Notes: SSD recommended

Recommended for fast loading times etc, not demanded.

Just how games like "RUST" recommend an ssd, as it loads much more quickly all the assets to the game, so you can play sooner. You're free to use an HDD, but if a Developer notes "SSD recommended", that's usually a performance recommendation.

Originally posted by dalmatian700:

If they want to make these demands on consumers

Again, these are recommendations, not demands.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

at what point do you say i cant afford this hobby.....

[Cream Tea]

Originally posted by ragefifty50:

at what point do you say i cant afford this hobby.....

Probably about now. The PC that I built recently is probably the last PC I will ever get. Most newer games aren't even worth playing but I still want to be able to play the classics without Steam locking me out for not using Windows 10 or above.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Cream Tea:

When an HDD begins to die you can usually tell it's nearing the end and even if it dies there are ways of recovering the data. When an SSD begins to die you don't really notice until it's too late and when it fails that's it you've lost everything.

Not my experience at all. I have 6 SSD in my system by now, the oldest is 10+ years old, still works fine.
My last HDD just died last week after only 2 years, one moment to another.
Last HDD Health Check had her at 92% "very good" and then BAMM, stopped reading data from one day to another.
The head reader just crapped out, recovering the data on it would cost me like 500 bucks.

So no, HDD are definitely not more reliable then SSD, all SSD i ever had since 2012 still work, i lost like 3-4 HDD in that time to mechanical errors.

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by Cream Tea:

When an HDD begins to die you can usually tell it's nearing the end and even if it dies there are ways of recovering the data. When an SSD begins to die you don't really notice until it's too late and when it fails that's it you've lost everything.

That is more or less true. Good on you to being informed.
Although, even HDDs can catastrophically fail in a short amount of time.
Just had a HDD die on me. Luckily it was still under warranty and no data was lost due to the data being in a RAID 1 stored redundantly on a second HDD, which hasn't failed.
RMA'd the defective drive and rebuild the RAID.

SSDs can fail, HDDs can fail. Data loss can only happen if you have no backups.
And no, a RAID 1 is NOT a backup. It's just data redundancy.

[Cream Tea]

Originally posted by Ogami:

So no, HDD are definitely not more reliable then SSD, all SSD i ever had since 2012 still work, i lost like 3-4 HDD in that time to mechanical errors.

How much capacity have those SSDs lost?

[Lystent]

Originally posted by Shaggy:

Those are just the times we live in. In the not so distant future your average gaming PCs won't have a mechanical HDD..

Nothing but SSDs on my last 2 computers. However, I've ever been plagued by limited storage.

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by dalmatian700:

if you want something more than a terabyte. $200-250 for 2TB, $500 for 4TB, nearly $2000.

A perfectly good mid-range 1tb SSD will cost between £40-60. A 1mb PS1 memory card used to cost £14.99 back in the day. It really isn't that extortionate for what you get in return.

[Lystent]

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

Originally posted by dalmatian700:

if you want something more than a terabyte. $200-250 for 2TB, $500 for 4TB, nearly $2000.

A perfectly good mid-range 1tb SSD will cost between £40-60. A 1mb PS1 memory card used to cost £14.99 back in the day. It really isn't that extortionate for what you get in return.

Back in the time of PS1, a terabyte was ludicrous to have on a PC, let alone in solid state form.

Edit: I also can only have a few storage drives at once, due to MoBo/case constraints.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by Cream Tea:

How much capacity have those SSDs lost?

None? My oldest is from 2012 and a 256 GB model, still has all space available.
Only shows with 67% health in HDD Check after all that time but still holds and copies data fine.
Will replace it though with a new 2 TB SSD soon but thats just because i want more space and have no more SATA slots available.


Also with SSD you can much more reliably see when they are about to fail. There are test programs that test the sector writes on a SSD/HDD and how healthy it is.
Thats useful on SSD , not much on HDD since those usually fail with a mechanical error like the reader head and not the sector write portion.
As seen with my last HDD which showed 92% Health a week before crapping out with a mechanical error.
While my 10 year old SSD at 67% health still works fine.