1TB SATA or NVMe SSD for games and media storage

[Mr.Humble]

Hello there!

right now there's a little discount from my retailer on Seagate Barracuda SSD 1TB making it 100€. I can also get an Intel 660p 1TB for slightly more - call it 110€.

 

Question is, should I go for either? I could use some extra storage - I installed around 20 games I want to play and my new Kingston 1TB NVMe SSD is at 25% remaining capacity  - but I still have my "old" Samsung 850 Evo 500GB.

 

The way I use my secondary SSD is that I have it as a target whenever I'm backing up something else - be it my primary SSD, my laptop, a drive from another PC... - and I store and edit my photos from it, and it's the location of my OneDrive folder, which is set up as a target for Windows File History daily backups. Plus I expect to swap games around fairly often, so overall I think that the write load on the SSD would be rather signifficant.

 

The 660p is rated for 200TBW, the Seagate is for 485TBW.

 

If I get a new SSD the 850 Evo will go to my dad's machine to cache our networked Storage Space of 4 1TB hard drives in parity setup.

 

Alternatively I can get the Seagate for my father as he has a Kingston A400 1TB which is... slow AF. doesn't go above 350 MB/s on sequential read. So I could get it for him to have a better OS drive. His PC is Z77 based and doesn't have NVMe support.

Which one would you go for for storing games, backups and media and photo editing? Or should I get it for my father? Or should I wait and get it later? Or not at all?

 

Soo many options please help me!

[Vishera]

NVME is faster than SATA,

Samsung SSDs are more durable and have better longevity.

 

It's up to your preferences.

[TheNaitsyrk]

11 minutes ago, Mr.Humble said:

Hello there!

right now there's a little discount from my retailer on Seagate Barracuda SSD 1TB making it 100€. I can also get an Intel 660p 1TB for slightly more - call it 110€.

 

Question is, should I go for either? I could use some extra storage - I installed around 20 games I want to play and my new Kingston 1TB NVMe SSD is at 25% remaining capacity  - but I still have my "old" Samsung 850 Evo 500GB.

 

The way I use my secondary SSD is that I have it as a target whenever I'm backing up something else - be it my primary SSD, my laptop, a drive from another PC... - and I store and edit my photos from it, and it's the location of my OneDrive folder, which is set up as a target for Windows File History daily backups. Plus I expect to swap games around fairly often, so overall I think that the write load on the SSD would be rather signifficant.

 

The 660p is rated for 200TBW, the Seagate is for 485TBW.

 

If I get a new SSD the 850 Evo will go to my dad's machine to cache our networked Storage Space of 4 1TB hard drives in parity setup.

 

Alternatively I can get the Seagate for my father as he has a Kingston A400 1TB which is... slow AF. doesn't go above 350 MB/s on sequential read. So I could get it for him to have a better OS drive. His PC is Z77 based and doesn't have NVMe support.

Which one would you go for for storing games, backups and media and photo editing? Or should I get it for my father? Or should I wait and get it later? Or not at all?

 

Soo many options please help me!

I have both.

4TB Samsung SSD and 2x 1TB NVMe. All from Samsung. I can notice only very slight differences between NVMe and SSD.

NVMe is more for moving files across one NVMe to another NVMe.

[mariushm]

Seagate uses TLC nand memory, which is a type of nand memory that's well known, stable, manufacturers made these memories for years, they have the experience to do them right and pretty much every ssd controller can work perfectly fine with them.

Intel uses QLC which is a relatively new type of NAND that packs more bits but the tradeoff is endurance, the number of writes and erases the memory can tolerate. 

It's newer tech, error correction is more important and more difficult to correct errors. it's still relatively new but for storing games and running games from SSD, it should be fine.

However, you also don't need the fast speeds of nvme for running games... you won't magically get games running n times faster just because you can read files at up to 2-3 GB per second instead of maximum 560 MB/s SATA allows.

 

So I'd say get the Intel one only if it's m.2 and you want to have fewer cables in your computer and you have a free m.2 connector with nvme... otherwise the Seagate drive with classic TLC nand memory would be a better choice

[Mr.Humble]

19 minutes ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

I have both.

4TB Samsung SSD and 2x 1TB NVMe. All from Samsung. I can notice only very slight differences between NVMe and SSD.

NVMe is more for moving files across one NVMe to another NVMe.

I had the Samsung 850 as OS drive before, and for normal use I basically can't tell a difference with the NVMe. Max when I'm moving something to the Samsung. 

 

My concern is that the backups can be 100GB a pop, and I worry that the caching algorithm on the 660p will not keep up, and that the endurance of qlc will not be sufficient. 

20 minutes ago, mariushm said:

So I'd say get the Intel one only if it's m.2 and you want to have fewer cables in your computer and you have a free m.2 connector with nvme... otherwise the Seagate drive with classic TLC nand memory would be a better choice

I do have a spare M.2 slot on my PC, complete with a heatsink to hide the ugly green PCB but I tend to think the same. 

[TheNaitsyrk]

30 minutes ago, Mr.Humble said:

I had the Samsung 850 as OS drive before, and for normal use I basically can't tell a difference with the NVMe. Max when I'm moving something to the Samsung. 

 

My concern is that the backups can be 100GB a pop, and I worry that the caching algorithm on the 660p will not keep up, and that the endurance of qlc will not be sufficient. 

I do have a spare M.2 slot on my PC, complete with a heatsink to hide the ugly green PCB but I tend to think the same. 

Do you already have NVMe in your PC?

[Mr.Humble]

51 minutes ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

Do you already have NVMe in your PC?

Yes the Kingston KC2000 is NVMe 3200/2200 Mb/s read/writes

[TheNaitsyrk]

2 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

Yes the Kingston KC2000 is NVMe 3200/2200 Mb/s read/writes

I would get another NVMe then because you can take advantage of the speeds if you move things between NVMes. Things move with speed of light.

[seagate_surfer]

Above all, its use is what will determine which would be the best option, as mentioned above moving things between SSDs NVMe will make everything feel much faster than with SATA SSDs, but if you do not need NVMe devices then the truth is that you will not you notice the difference between one and the other and that makes it a bit unnecessary.

[Mr.Humble]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your advice

 

I ultimately found a guy in my town who was selling a brand new, unopened 1TB 660p for 90€ (retail is 110€) so I went with that.

 

Overkill? Yeah. Good value? Definitely. Appropriate for it's use case? We shall see.

[seagate_surfer]

You are welcome and just post again if you still need more help!