Moar storage - Seagate 24TB hard drives with HAMR technology to soon arrive in 2021.

[RejZoR]

Because you just don't care then. You slam a 10TB HDD in your system and pair it with I don't know, 1TB SSD for cache purposes. You just don't care what or how you're gonna be using it, all you need to know at that point is that you have 10TB of total storage. The caching system will do that on its own and you just use the system. It's why I always got allergic reaction when people were sticking stupid tiny SSD boot drives into systems and then constantly MANUALLY shuffled games and apps to it coz it was just so small you couldn't have many games on it. With caching, it just does it automatically and does it really well as I was consistently getting 75-80% cache hit ratio. Only 20-25% of reads were still being done from HDD. Which usually means rarely accessed things that don't really affect access speeds all that much.

[CarlBar]

56 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Because you just don't care then. You slam a 10TB HDD in your system and pair it with I don't know, 1TB SSD for cache purposes. You just don't care what or how you're gonna be using it, all you need to know at that point is that you have 10TB of total storage. The caching system will do that on its own and you just use the system. It's why I always got allergic reaction when people were sticking stupid tiny SSD boot drives into systems and then constantly MANUALLY shuffled games and apps to it coz it was just so small you couldn't have many games on it. With caching, it just does it automatically and does it really well as I was consistently getting 75-80% cache hit ratio. Only 20-25% of reads were still being done from HDD. Which usually means rarely accessed things that don't really affect access speeds all that much.

 

Personally i totally understand the advantages of the system in terms of speed and how it works, and i'd love to see it integrated as a default feature into windows disk management tools. But my point is people who use enough storage to make HDD + SSD caching more cost effective than pure SSD storage are in the minority. Most people do not have enough data stored to make a HDD cost efficient compared to an SSD, and pure SSD is at worst as good as, and at best better than the caching solution.

 

Simply put most people won;t see any advantage because most people will never have enough data to actually need anything on the HDD.

[leadeater]

54 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

and i'd love to see it integrated as a default feature into windows disk management tools.

It already is, it's a feature/capability within Storage Spaces and i use it.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

stupid tiny SSD boot drives into systems and then constantly MANUALLY shuffled games and apps to it coz it was just so small you couldn't have many games on it.

Ah yes because everyone was and still is using tiny SSDs and are constantly moving files around  Or they aren't and have an appropriately sized SSD and almost never move files.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Internal-Solid-State-Drives/zgbs/pc/1292116011

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Ah yes because everyone was and still is using tiny SSDs and are constantly moving files around  Or they aren't and have an appropriately sized SSD and almost never move files.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Internal-Solid-State-Drives/zgbs/pc/1292116011

Coz things totally don't get bigger. Have you seen latest Rockstar games and all the Call of Duties? I just don't ge your train of thoughts. You slam a massive HDD, pair it with SSD cache and STOP GIVING A F**K. It'll just work fast. Which part of it is hard to understand here?!

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Coz things totally don't get bigger. Have you seen latest Rockstar games and all the Call of Duties? I just don't ge your train of thoughts. You slam a massive HDD, pair it with SSD cache and STOP GIVING A F**K. It'll just work fast. Which part of it is hard to understand here?!

Yes but not every game is or will be that size, and hey like I said how many games do you actually play consistently? You know you have the option of simply uninstalling games you don't actively play and if you feel like it at a later date downloaded it again.

 

The part where the common person own 100 50GB games and plays all of them always, that's the part, because it's not a real scenario.

 

And if your working data set you commonly use is greater than your SSD cache is you will be cache trashing, that SSD will die quickly, and performance will suffer as you are accessing the HDD layer not he SSD. It does you no real good if when you load the game and start playing all you get is HDD speeds, next time it might be better if it's still in the SSD layer and hasn't been cycled out for different blocks of data. Caching is not just a throw it together and forget kind of thing, you either have to think about how much cache you need or you buy a much lager SSD to remove all that thought process which conversely ruins the cost saving argument altogether. If all the games you actively play fit on your SSD cache then you are no better off than having a separate SSD and HDD, your data is never moving between the layers so you do not actually have caching, you have it configured but inactive/idle.

[Sauron]

Eventually we'll get to the point where HDDs or even SATA is just not fast enough to keep up with these capacities. Good luck backing these up

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Coz things totally don't get bigger. Have you seen latest Rockstar games and all the Call of Duties? I just don't ge your train of thoughts. You slam a massive HDD, pair it with SSD cache and STOP GIVING A F**K. It'll just work fast. Which part of it is hard to understand here?!

Again, I don't feel like I really got a clear understanding of what benefits you see from using the SSD cache.

Is it just so that you don't have to "give a fuck" and install everything into a single, visible partition in Windows?

 

Maybe it's a preference thing, but I prefer being able to manually manage where my data is located. That way you get consistent speed and more storage than with your method.

I would gladly take the higher storage capacity, and the more consistent speeds at the cost of having a C and a D drive on my PC.

 

I don't want to put words in your mouth though so I want to ask you again. Let's say someone is buying a 1TB SSD, and a 4TB HDD.

Would you recommend they buy that third party SSD caching software you recommended in some other thread and then use the SSD just as a cache? I would recommend that person assign their SSD as the C drive, and the 4TB HDD as the D drive, and then manually install whichever programs they want on each drive. Want fast performance? Install it on C. Want it for bulk storage? Save it on the D drive.

 

I just don't get what benefit using the SSD as a cache would have. It doesn't increase performance (it only makes it inconsistent), it doesn't increase storage space (in fact it might even reduce the total storage capacity), it costs more money (if you buy the third party program you have recommended in the other thread) and it is yet another program that needs to run on the PC.

I just don't get why. It seems like it only brings drawbacks and no benefits, except not having to think of which drive you install software on (which is not exactly a hard thing to do).

[StDragon]

30 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Want fast performance? Install it on C. Want it for bulk storage? Save it on the D drive.

 

I just don't get what benefit using the SSD as a cache would have. It doesn't increase performance (it only makes it inconsistent), it doesn't increase storage space (in fact it might even reduce the total storage capacity), it costs more money (if you buy the third party program you have recommended in the other thread) and it is yet another program that needs to run on the PC.

I just don't get why. It seems like it only brings drawbacks and no benefits, except not having to think of which drive you install software on (which is not exactly a hard thing to do).

Depends on how much storage you're needing. At some point, it makes economic sense to use the SSD (or a portion of it) for caching. But I agree, OS  and core apps on SSD, and media with rarely used apps on HDD.

 

Caching solutions learn which blocks of data are accessed most frequently, so data on the HDD will intelligently cache to the SSD. But, it has to learn that. So depending on the app or game, it's possible to not be as unpredictable in results as you might imagine. But again YMMV.

 

FYI, Steam will let you have multiple libraries. Put one on the SSD and one HDD. It's an easy compromise IMHO.

[RejZoR]

Oh, sigh....

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Again, I don't feel like I really got a clear understanding of what benefits you see from using the SSD cache.

Is it just so that you don't have to "give a fuck" and install everything into a single, visible partition in Windows?

 

Maybe it's a preference thing, but I prefer being able to manually manage where my data is located. That way you get consistent speed and more storage than with your method.

I would gladly take the higher storage capacity, and the more consistent speeds at the cost of having a C and a D drive on my PC.

 

I don't want to put words in your mouth though so I want to ask you again. Let's say someone is buying a 1TB SSD, and a 4TB HDD.

Would you recommend they buy that third party SSD caching software you recommended in some other thread and then use the SSD just as a cache? I would recommend that person assign their SSD as the C drive, and the 4TB HDD as the D drive, and then manually install whichever programs they want on each drive. Want fast performance? Install it on C. Want it for bulk storage? Save it on the D drive.

 

I just don't get what benefit using the SSD as a cache would have. It doesn't increase performance (it only makes it inconsistent), it doesn't increase storage space (in fact it might even reduce the total storage capacity), it costs more money (if you buy the third party program you have recommended in the other thread) and it is yet another program that needs to run on the PC.

I just don't get why. It seems like it only brings drawbacks and no benefits, except not having to think of which drive you install software on (which is not exactly a hard thing to do).

 

As STDragon mentioned once you get upto a big enough mass of data it actually becomes the case that for a lot of situations the caching approach is better. The issue here is RejZoR is treated everyone lik they'll use 10Tb of storage minimum before they replace their PC.

 

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Coz things totally don't get bigger. Have you seen latest Rockstar games and all the Call of Duties? I just don't ge your train of thoughts. You slam a massive HDD, pair it with SSD cache and STOP GIVING A F**K. It'll just work fast. Which part of it is hard to understand here?!

 

And how many systems have any games at all installed? Answer very few. How many have multiple games installed, Again very few. By the time the majority of people can fill a 1-2TB SSD they'll be buying a new PC. And they probably won't bother to transfer anything over, they'll just reinstall and start from scratch on their new PC which will have an affordable SSD even bigger than their old one.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

As STDragon mentioned once you get upto a big enough mass of data it actually becomes the case that for a lot of situations the caching approach is better. The issue here is RejZoR is treated everyone lik they'll use 10Tb of storage minimum before they replace their PC.

 

 

And how many systems have any games at all installed? Answer very few. How many have multiple games installed, Again very few. By the time the majority of people can fill a 1-2TB SSD they'll be buying a new PC. And they probably won't bother to transfer anything over, they'll just reinstall and start from scratch on their new PC which will have an affordable SSD even bigger than their old one.

Honestly I know quite a few people who simply keep their current ssds and wipe them when they do a new build and maybe get a new boot drive.