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SSD or HDD for storage/download?

qnair

Assuming price isn't an issue, will there be any benefit of an SSD for uses such as:

-Downloading install files and installing applications or drm free games from SSD

-Unpacking archive files

-Downloading music (for example game soundtrack archives, bandcamp)

 

-Often with HDD I get annoyed at how long it takes for the File Explorer to load, for media to start etc.

-Backups would be faster from the SSD to an external SSD

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What might help with a HDD is not allowing for it to enter into any sleep/low power states.  

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30 minutes ago, qnair said:

Assuming price isn't an issue, will there be any benefit of an SSD for uses such as:

-Downloading install files and installing applications or drm free games from SSD

-Unpacking archive files

-Downloading music (for example game soundtrack archives, bandcamp)

 

-Often with HDD I get annoyed at how long it takes for the File Explorer to load, for media to start etc.

-Backups would be faster from the SSD to an external SSD

storage used hard drives usually go into sleep mode, there probably is a way to change that i just havent looked into it yet, if you want to have better durability and the wiped out chance of your drive taking the tumble in a move or having instant acsess all the time i would suggest a ssd BUT linus did state in a video if you had higher capacity storage ssds they die off faster, if price really isnt a problem you could make a raid with a couple of 250gb ssds, or if you wont be putting heavy loads on it all the time you can just get a high capacity drive,  if you want cheap storage, holds alot, fragile but fine if you arnt moving any time soon, more storage than a ssd, then get a hdd

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38 minutes ago, qnair said:

Assuming price isn't an issue, will there be any benefit of an SSD for uses such as:

-Downloading install files and installing applications or drm free games from SSD

-Unpacking archive files

-Downloading music (for example game soundtrack archives, bandcamp)

  1. Unless your internet speed is faster than the HDD, which likely it's not, then no.
  2. It could, but it depends on what you're using.
  3. No, see #1.

If price is no object, then at this point, why not get the higher performing part?

 

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Yeah everything will happen faster on a SSD...and by faster I mean improved.  Only reason people use HDD anymore is cause they can't afford an SSD -or- they have an old HDD left after upgrading to a SSD....they (including myself) hung onto the HDD to expand their storage of data that isn't impacted by tiny IOPS/bandwidth limitations.  Honestly if I could justify buying a 2tb m.2 NVMe ssd...I'd toss my other drives into my desk drawer.

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3 hours ago, just that pc guy said:

storage used hard drives usually go into sleep mode, there probably is a way to change that i just havent looked into it yet, if you want to have better durability and the wiped out chance of your drive taking the tumble in a move or having instant acsess all the time i would suggest a ssd BUT linus did state in a video if you had higher capacity storage ssds they die off faster, if price really isnt a problem you could make a raid with a couple of 250gb ssds, or if you wont be putting heavy loads on it all the time you can just get a high capacity drive,  if you want cheap storage, holds alot, fragile but fine if you arnt moving any time soon, more storage than a ssd, then get a hdd

Thank you for the comment! To my understanding it's the opposite, the higher capacity SSD the longer it lasts.

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I'd totally have SSD for bulk storage too, because once you get used to absolute silence without any grinding or clicking, it's hard to go back. But 4TB SSD of almost any kind will still set you back around 400€ which is just too much for all the random nonsense I'd archive on it. I wish companies would actually make bulk storage SSD's, the kinds that have rather basic controller and slower, but still reasonably fast NAND that is also reasonably reliable for lowest possible price. Basically it can have SD card like controller for all I care. Call the drives Archive SSD and I'd buy that. They already have bunch of different HDD's for various specialized tasks, why not SSD as well. You'll know such SSD isn't good for primary drive where random access and write speed matters, but would be excellent for silent bulk storage.

 

I never thought it'll be so incredibly hard to pick a bulk storage HDD when silence is the highest priority right after raw capacity. Any HDD clicking now would drive me insane.

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1 hour ago, qnair said:

Thank you for the comment! To my understanding it's the opposite, the higher capacity SSD the longer it lasts.

In terms of absolute writes, yes. More often than not you're going to have a failure somewhere other than the NAND and complexity for the controller, DRAM, FTL, etc. grows with capacity, not least because there's more dies in parallel and interleaved use. Especially with DRAM-less drives, or DRAM-equipped drives in an unstable environment (e.g. power loss concerns).

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6 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:
  1. Unless your internet speed is faster than the HDD, which likely it's not, then no.
  2. It could, but it depends on what you're using.
  3. No, see #1.

If price is no object, then at this point, why not get the higher performing part?

 

Because I worry about reliability issues and I don't know how much I would actually write on it and whether it'd be too much.

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On 1/16/2020 at 5:43 PM, nick name said:

What might help with a HDD is not allowing for it to enter into any sleep/low power states.  

Thanks, didn't know about that!

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On 1/16/2020 at 6:09 PM, Stu_Bear said:

Yeah everything will happen faster on a SSD...and by faster I mean improved.  Only reason people use HDD anymore is cause they can't afford an SSD -or- they have an old HDD left after upgrading to a SSD....they (including myself) hung onto the HDD to expand their storage of data that isn't impacted by tiny IOPS/bandwidth limitations.  Honestly if I could justify buying a 2tb m.2 NVMe ssd...I'd toss my other drives into my desk drawer.

Another reason to use HDD is that for example I have an external drive I backup to about once a year and if I only backed up like once in two years, I might lose the data.

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I lift and shift from my SSDs to HDD occasionally for long term storage.

 

I move back to SSDs for editing etc and let it save while I do other things.

 

HDD pretty much shouldn't be for direct reading to use, unless your in a super budget rig.

 

All my programs, my "My Docs" and all OS stuff is on SSDs.

 

The only "use" my HDD has is writing to the downloads folder, as its more limited by my internet connection.

 

One thing that is important, my m.2 has my OS and my SSD has my docs and other "important" files. I don't want them on the same drive. I do however have programs written across both as these can easily be replaced if if my OS screws up.

 

I've been following this practice since around the days of XP, using HDDs back then and partitions, then with an tiny SSD (60GBs lol) just for the OS and a handful of steam games in Vista days before finally getting second SSD around the days of Win 7 so I could have one just for steam games (ended up with two for steam and one for OS totalling just over 800GB). With 10 I have multple SSDs totalling 2TBs and a 4TB HDD for "warm" storage. I have cold backups of a load of important stuff (can be replaced but hard work) plus cloud backups of really important stuff (hard to replace).

 

We really have come a long way in terms of storage!

 

My old HDDs still have the use as cold stores, the old SSDs are now all in laptops and notebooks giving them a lease of life again and my original SSD is something I am thinking of turning into some art form my wall or something.

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This makes total sense to me.

Finally re-starting my digital prodco (production company) MTS MEDIA...

I'm putting together the new camera audio tech, etc., over next few months...

But I'm focusing this time on laying a real solid foundation  for the post production first...

So it's truly about storage.

Looking at 40-60 hours of video-audio files for storage first.

Like to start with 25-5- tb storage for first year...add to it over a 2 year period.

Until I'm at 100 tb.

I want and need the speed of SSD...but your comms above on the switch with HDD for certain items makes sense.

I'll look into this more and update.

i have no idea who the top brands-companies are for this tech.

No idea if more brands-companies overseas have more solid product these days.

Any online sites with solid tech info about this particular subject dealing with storage for video-audio content? Thanks.

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The way I've set it is that my 2TB SSD is my main drive. It has 2 partitions, 1x SYSTEM partition and 1x DATA partition. Everything I do is on these two partitions. I recently bought 8TB HDD for purposes of bulk data storage and offloading stuff that I want around but isn't frequently accessed or speed is of no importance. It's just gonna be there so I can dump data on it to free up the 2TB SSD for more regularly used stuff.

 

The long start delay shouldn't happen even with HDD unless it spun down into standby and it takes few seconds to spin up platters and start operating. Until it hits operational RPM it's not going to react thus the delay. You can turn off the sleeping of HDD's in Windows settings.

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