rmation about games suitable for a 5400 RPM hard drive is available.
rmation about games suitable for a 5400 RPM hard drive is available.
If you believe EU prices are cheap, then I genuinely care. A 1Tb SSD costs €130, roughly the same as what 500Gb was a year ago when I upgraded. The cost of a 500Gb SSD is comparable to a 2Tb 7200rpm HDD. Checking Australian prices from PCPP shows similar values. 2Tb drives are around $75, while a 500Gb SSD is about $95. That’s why I suggest a 500Gb SSD for games and software, unless you need more storage for other purposes.
The most affordable option I've found in my country (though I'm not sure if it's discounted) is the Samsung Evo 860 1TB. SSD prices have dropped a lot, and NVME ones are even cheaper. But in many places it's still not affordable enough to replace HDDs... I can find 3-4TB W.D Black for one 1TB SSD here.
Sure, it makes sense to purchase a 500GB drive just to include some games. STEAM should handle game files quite smoothly... perhaps we could use a high-capacity HDD and a 500GB SSD. Then we could save the games we play often and move them to the mechanical HDD when we're done. However, Segate's Firecuda SSHD seems reasonably priced, though I'm not sure about its performance. It's similar in price to W.D Blacks, but it runs faster. In the past, Seagate's reliability has been questionable, with a high failure rate.
The optimal setup involves placing the system like this:
C:\ SDD (OS drive, either SATA or NVMe)
D:\ SDD (active game(s), NVMe)
E:\ HDD (inactive games/rarely used, 7200RPM drive)
F:\ HDD (other infrequently accessed data such as videos)
Due to the time needed for spin-up during game capture, it's best to record video on an SSD. For gaming—especially in MMOs—using an SSD is crucial since slower drives can put the slowest player at a disadvantage, and in some games, this could even result in being eliminated. A game like FFXIV might take 40 seconds to load from a 7200RPM drive, whereas it would only take under 5 seconds on an SATA SSD.
Most offline games work just fine on mechanical drives, but they tend to have noticeably longer loading times. Avoid loading everything onto your SSD; keep it below the 50% capacity to maintain optimal performance. This is because excessive usage accelerates wear on the drive cells and affects data handling efficiency. (Remember this if you’ve ever used a USB stick—larger drives generally perform better due to more layers in the chip.)
If you have only one drive, choose the fastest possible one. However, since technology has advanced rapidly since 2015, a 256GB SSD—whether SATA or NVMe—is significantly better than any mechanical option. Just remember not to store important data on an SSD; while they are fast, most tests show they can fail prematurely due to wear and become unusable.