Is it better to have 2 smaller storage devices or one big one?

[deama]

So I am currently building a PC, here's a link to the parts I was thinking of using:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zjwQcq

 

My question though is that I'm not entirely sure about the storage setup. Should I use 1x 1TB NVMe m.2, or 2x 500GB NVMe m.2? The obvious answer is the 1TB one, however I believe this would cause a performance hit (bottleneck) because it would be better to put windows, windows software, small applications etc... on one m.2, whilst put more hefty applications and games on the other m.2. This would seperate the environments, so that if you're playing a game, and that game happens to want to load a windows file, it can do so WHILST being able to continue to stream/load textures at the same time.

 

Any thoughts on this?

[IAmAndre]

6 minutes ago, deama said:

if you're playing a game, and that game happens to want to load a windows file, it can do so WHILST being able to continue to stream/load textures at the same time.

I would need to have an actual experiment to confirm that. If you are buying an NVMe drive I'm not sure if a game can easily saturate the bandwidth and for how long it would do it. I don't think that the performance would be particularly better with two separate drives. However it's not a bad idea to have two separate drives so you don't lose all your files if one of them dies.

[Princess Luna]

Those WD Blues are not NVMe... not that it matters much if any to a mainstream PC.

 

Just grab a good SSD for boot and a HDD for storage?

[Stu_Bear]

2...one for OS...one for games/storage/goat-porn.  Seriously it prevents IOPS bottlenecks...

 

A smallish one for the OS is just fine...doesn't have to be a top-shelf model either cause an idling OS doesn't use up much IOPS/bandwidth.  

 

The one for games/storage it's not a bad idea to have something with plenty of cache and great 4k random read speeds...here NVMe has a strong lead. 

[deama]

30 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

Those WD Blues are not NVMe... not that it matters much if any to a mainstream PC.

 

Just grab a good SSD for boot and a HDD for storage?

Thought I'd grab m.2 instead since they're the same price as normal SSDs and m.2 is supposed to be better?

[Stu_Bear]

1 minute ago, deama said:

Thought I'd grab m.2 instead since they're the same price as normal SSDs and m.2 is supposed to be better?

yes m.2 is better...

[Princess Luna]

4 minutes ago, deama said:

Thought I'd grab m.2 instead since they're the same price as normal SSDs and m.2 is supposed to be better?

M.2 by itself is not better because it can also use the very same SATA3 protocol as the cable ones... in order to be any different and use the pci-e 3.0 x2/x4 bus you need a NVMe SSD.

[deama]

3 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

M.2 by itself is not better because it can also use the very same SATA3 protocol as the cable ones... in order to be any different and use the pci-e 3.0 x2/x4 bus you need a NVMe SSD.

Oh, that's no good, any idea which ones are NVMe? Like, can you give me one that's around 500GB?

[deama]

I just watched a videon on NVMe and now it makes sense. However, how the hell do you tell if an m.2 SSD uses NVMe or SATA? If I try and google it just gives me crap.