Two different SSDs, how would you allocate usage?

[arandomguy]

Bought a new larger capacity SSD intending for it to be a HD replacement for a games drive.

I currently have an existing SSD from a few years ago, smaller capacity and slower, for the OS and shuffling games back and forth.

So the plan was to have -
old SSd - OS, pagefile, applications. Some games.
new SSD - Games only

Or would you allocate it differently?

Or just not bother and sell the old SSD?

 

[Seba]

If the new SSD is big enough and if you can get a good price for the old SSD, then sell the old SSD.

 

[Teabaghead]

I would use the new SSD for the OS and games. Sell the smaller slower one

 

[JimmiG]

I use my old 120GB SSD for a few games and the new Evo 850 500GB for the OS, applications and games. While 120GB might have been enough for just Windows 10, the new 500GB drive is faster, so it makes more sense to use it as the OS drive.

 

[Deders]

I'd put the OS on the newer drive as it has the most varied kinds of files that will take advantage of faster performing 4k and similar reads and writes. If there is any difference to be made it will be there.

 

[arandomguy]

I should mention that drives are a 128GB M4 and 500GB BX100. At least going by as-ssd numbers only the write performance is a big improvement,

I was wondering if there was any advantage in separating out the work load between both drives. From what I've seen it seems that mixed read/write combined on SSDs is lower than just read or write, suggesting some type of overhead for mixed workloads? I believe most SSD reviews are also done separately from the OS? So I was wondering if some sort of allocation for the OS, pagefile, and applications/games might be more optimal.

The size issue is a bit tricky. Either the new drive is overkill if I want to still do game management and shuffle between a HD. Or it's borderline if I want to fit everything and might still need the older SSD especially with average game installs going up significantly now.

The only extra caveat to all this is I've always liked to separate everything from the OS volume due to making OS re-installs much simpler and faster.

Might need to do some personal testing as well I guess.

Local search seems to show people listing similar sized drives for $50. I also have a laptop and 2nd PC which I don't really use. Could put the smaller SSD in one of those for the other people.

 

[Deders]

One thing worthy of note (but may confuse the issue) is that AHCI SSD's are only capable of IO from one core at a time. NVMe on the other hand can handle requests from multiple cores at the same time. Knowing this with the choices you have I would games that have a lot of data to load on the 2nd SSD although the benefits might just be a second here and there. I don't think anyone has fully tested this configuration.

You've probably noticed that just by having the OS on an SSD, games loading from HDD load faster than if everything was on HDD. This is due to things like DirectX files loading not interrupting the game files, as well as the 4k type reads not getting in the way. I have doubts that having games on the 2nd SSD will add too much to this effect as SSD's are already very fast, but it might be worth considering in special cases.

Basically anything that takes a long time to load anyway, like GTAV, I'd probably have on the 2nd SSD "just in case" there was a way to shave a few seconds off it, but it is more of a best guess than a proven effect at this point.

 

[coercitiv]

I was wondering if there was any advantage in separating out the work load between both drives. From what I've seen it seems that mixed read/write combined on SSDs is lower than just read or write, suggesting some type of overhead for mixed workloads? I believe most SSD reviews are also done separately from the OS? So I was wondering if some sort of allocation for the OS, pagefile, and applications/games might be more optimal.

With your usage pattern there is hardly any perceivable advantage in separating workloads. Benchmarks may see it (especially in heavy workloads) but you won't (because your usage scenario is likely quite light in comparison). To give you an example, I cannot tell the difference between loading Diablo 3 from a SATA3 vs. SATA2 (850 Pro and 840 Pro respectively, placed on different ports on the same system).

Focus on how you want things organized then act accordingly:

• If you want best separation between OS and data, put OS on the small SSD.
• If you value the option to use the small SSD in other builds at any time, install OS on bigger drive, use the small one as temporary extension.

 

[moonbogg]

I just bought an 850 EVO. I clean installed windows 10 onto it and I am using it for games and everything else, but I still have two older and smaller SSD's which I will simply use as games storage and other storage. STEAM and origin let you install to different drives, so the less important and less played games will go on those two drives. I wanted the faster and newer drive to be used for OS and all priority programs. I see no value in selling the older SSD's. I'd rather have the extra storage space since those drives are still fast and work just fine.
Ideally, I would get rid of all this crap and just buy a single 2TB EVO, or wait for the new 4TB one to come out, but those are getting PRETTY damn expensive.

 

[JimmiG]

One thing worthy of note (but may confuse the issue) is that AHCI SSD's are only capable of IO from one core at a time. NVMe on the other hand can handle requests from multiple cores at the same time. Knowing this with the choices you have I would games that have a lot of data to load on the 2nd SSD although the benefits might just be a second here and there. I don't think anyone has fully tested this configuration.

You've probably noticed that just by having the OS on an SSD, games loading from HDD load faster than if everything was on HDD. This is due to things like DirectX files loading not interrupting the game files, as well as the 4k type reads not getting in the way. I have doubts that having games on the 2nd SSD will add too much to this effect as SSD's are already very fast, but it might be worth considering in special cases.

Basically anything that takes a long time to load anyway, like GTAV, I'd probably have on the 2nd SSD "just in case" there was a way to shave a few seconds off it, but it is more of a best guess than a proven effect at this point.

Valid points, but probably the difference would be extremely small in reality. With your example (OS on SSD, game on HDD), the difference is already very small compared to just an HDD. With SSD+SSD I don't think it would be measurable. Also if your operating system is reading and writing to the C drive constantly while a game is loading, something is wrong with your setup.

Also, loading in most games is still single-threaded and sequential. Trying to parallelize it would be a lot of work for developers, and they would need fallbacks in case the game is installed on an HDD or very slow SSD, otherwise loading times would be extremely long due to the constant HDD seeking (try copying 4 files at the same time from an HDD vs copying them one at a time).

 

[Deders]

I was mostly talking about loading game related, directx, drivers, dll's etc on one drive, alongside the game on a 2nd drive.