Is there any benefits having a M.2 SSD for OS, and a secondary SSD for storage? (M.2 SSD + 2.5 SSD)

ZeroGat · December 28, 2020

In an upcoming build for a 5600x with either a 3060 ti or 3070, Im wondering if i can benefit from having 2 SSDs, one a M.2 for the Operating System mainly, and a 2.5'' storage SSD for games.

The only reason im asking, is I want to know if there's an advantage to having a sperate SSD for the OS, like in a SSD+HDD set. As windows is constantly working with the storage drive, and henceforth the choice of having the OS on the same storage unit(HDD) will make it slow.

My current setup is 2x 850 Evo 500GB in a Raid0 setup, no complaints but storage is running low.

Im currently deciding on a Crucial MX500 2.5'' 2TB, with a 970 EVO Plus M.2 250GB. If the benefits is only a few seconds i wouldn't see a reason behind such a setup.

Also is there any alternatives to the Crucial?

WereCat · December 28, 2020

the only advantage from that is that if you reinstall your OS you can keep the games on your other drive and dont have to install them again if you move the disk to other PC or if your main SSD fails

ZeroGat · December 28, 2020

So no noticeable changes, only benefits to not lose data?

Chionele · December 28, 2020

Having less drives in a way makes life easier because things are not scattered around as much, but when it comes to SSD's there's no performance benefit in not running your OS and games from different drives.

The 970 EVO Plus is NVME so it's much faster than the SATA drive with reads and writes, but unless you do those with really large files you won't really be seeing any performance benefit from that upgrade.

ZeroGat · December 28, 2020

Aight, all i needed to know, Thanks for clearing it up for me.

Paolo Pandas · December 28, 2020

In my setup, I am using the NVME as boot drive. All the data are stored in a SATA3 SSD. This is to make backing up and future upgrading easier. Also avoid the potential "oops" mistake when you select the wrong upgrade options.

Finally I created a RAM drive and re-direct all the temporary files from Windows and applications as well as the browsers' cache files there. This is to extend the life span of the SSD by moving frequent writes to RAM drive.