My HDD of 10 years finally died and I'm looking to switch to a SSD for storage. To DRAM or not to DRAM?

[WolfyKilo]

As the title suggests, my 3TB WD Red drive kicked the bucket. So I am currently in the market for a new drive that's a SSD. I mostly used my old drive for storing my Steam library, video/audio assets, and a few random installs of programs. I have a vague understanding on how DRAM works and I'm wondering if I use a SSD as I did my old drive would it be best to have DRAM Cashe or I could go without. Once I recover most of my data, of course I'll need a new drive to put it on. But again, to DRAM or not to DRAM or maybe I could go HDD again? I don't need fast storage, just not painfully slow. 

[SkilledRebuilds]

Dram for sure on a BOOT DRIVE.

Don't make the same mistakes as me and others...

Sorry for this novel....

Spoiler

Biggest mistake you'll ever make with your PC freezing and stuttering while operations are happening.to the drive over time. Its a horrible windows experience, its not worth the annoyance of saving some dollars.

Save once, spend twice... don't do it.

Your RAM will also increase a few gigs up and down while using DRAMLESS, and if you do anything remotely large over a few gigs being written (not a lot, like 2-4Gigs of data) then it makes the whole PC suffer in real time as it tries to catch up.

You buy an SSD to make PC snappy, not worse.

 

File access rimes during its DRAMLESS writing to the SSD are exponentially increased as well, esp once you write more than a couple gigs to it. As a boot drive being loaded, doing things while it's busy also suffer.

You buy an SSD to make PC snappy, not worse.

 

Just dont do it for a boot drive.

I did once, swapped within the same week to something better it was an absolute horrible experience as a gaming pc boot drive.

 

As a Games secondary drive its okay... still gets bogged down with larger game updates and RAM use still climbs and falls using it.

 

I would now... NEVER use dramless as a boot drive ever.

If you still decide to, I'd wager $100 you swap it for something better soon after purchase anyway.

 

[WolfyKilo]

10 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

"Your RAM will also sky-rocket up and down while using DRAMLESS, and if you do anything remotely large over a few gigs being written (not a lot, like 2-4Gigs of data) then it makes the whole PC suffer in real time as a boot drive."

 

 

Oh? Yeah, not ideal since I have Adobe Products usually installed on my storage drive. Adobe is a massive RAM hog regardless of program.

[Dukesilver27-]

Speaking from personal experience.

My boot drive and game drive is one and the same, and it is DRAMless.

I could download games on steam while playing another steam game, no issue whatsoever. Windows response snappiness is the same.

It's not that big of deal.

Any decent SSD is an upgrade over HDD/SSHD, just don't pick junk SSDs.

I personally am using the Team MP33, my ROG laptop has the lowest end Intel SSD (I forgot the model number, it is OEM only), both of which are DRAMless.

[SkilledRebuilds]

21 minutes ago, WolfyKilo said:

Oh? Yeah, not ideal since I have Adobe Products usually installed on my storage drive. Adobe is a massive RAM hog regardless of program.

I could watch the RAM increase in realtime while writing to the DR-LESS SSD, it could be a few gig extra RAM use at times, slowly climbing, then falling, then rising, then falling, meanwhile, the average response time (shown in task manager looking at drive stats) the response times get into the 'seconds' not milliseconds. (1000-4000ms) response times when active.

Just not ideal whatsoever for a Boot Drive where you are likely also Multitasking... or trying to.

Maybe its MY USE case, or even MY drive in question vs someone elses dramless drive without much issue. (Not all drives ARE equal is true)
I am just explaining what I saw over time using it as I do.

[Alex Atkin UK]

58 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Biggest mistake you'll ever make with your PC freezing and stuttering while operations are happening.to the drive over time. Its a horrible windows experience, its not worth the annoyance of saving some dollars.

Save once, spend twice... don't do it.

Your RAM will also increase a few gigs up and down while using DRAMLESS, and if you do anything remotely large over a few gigs being written (not a lot, like 2-4Gigs of data) then it makes the whole PC suffer in real time as it tries to catch up.

You buy an SSD to make PC snappy, not worse.

Agreed.  While I get away with DRAMless as my NAS/Server boot drive, this was only after getting a SATA SSD for extracting files onto as I found quickly the SLC cache was too small on the 500GB drive and the UI would stutter once writes filled up the SLC cache.  With a 2TB+ the problem is generally mitigated and since upgrading it to 4TB I've not had any issues when writing to it, though I mostly do lots of small files.

 

DRAMless is great for primarily reads (games, videos, other storage in general).   You just really don't want your swap partition on it unless its a large drive with a big SLC cache and/or you have a plenty of RAM (like 32GB or even 64GB so there always plenty free).

 

29 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

Speaking from personal experience.

My boot drive and game drive is one and the same, and it is DRAMless.

I could download games on steam while playing another steam game, no issue whatsoever. Windows response snappiness is the same.

It's not that big of deal.

Any decent SSD is an upgrade over HDD/SSHD, just don't pick junk SSDs.

I personally am using the Team MP33, my ROG laptop has the lowest end Intel SSD (I forgot the model number, it is OEM only), both of which are DRAMless.

Depends on your broadband speed too though.  I now have Gigabit which can be faster than a DRAMless QLC SSD once the SLC cache has filled up.  Although I haven't really used my gaming laptop since getting it to test that, as it too came with a basic Intel SSD.

Its also possible Linux at the time I got it didn't support host buffer memory.

[Dukesilver27-]

14 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Depends on your broadband speed too though.  I now have Gigabit which can be faster than a DRAMless QLC SSD once the SLC cache has filled up.  Although I haven't really used my gaming laptop since getting it to test that, as it too came with a basic Intel SSD.

Ah that makes sense, 3rd world country problems.

Regardless, even moving games into the SSD while playing another game is fine.

I honestly have never felt like my SSD is too slow, overall very satisfied,

[Alex Atkin UK]

28 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

Ah that makes sense, 3rd world country problems.

Regardless, even moving games into the SSD while playing another game is fine.

I honestly have never felt like my SSD is too slow, overall very satisfied,

Still, the difference between DRAM and DRAMless can often make it silly to compromise.  Especially if it means you might then need to upgrade your RAM.

[WolfyKilo]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

"DRAMless is great for primarily reads (games, videos, other storage in general).   You just really don't want your swap partition on it unless its a large drive with a big SLC cache and/or you have a plenty of RAM (like 32GB or even 64GB so there always plenty free)."

Sounds like I'd be fine without DRAM since games, storage, and a few installs would be the primary use of the new drive. I'm running a Intel 660p 2tb as my boot drive, so I'm good on not booting from a DRAMless drive. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

30 minutes ago, WolfyKilo said:

Sounds like I'd be fine without DRAM since games, storage, and a few installs would be the primary use of the new drive. I'm running a Intel 660p 2tb as my boot drive, so I'm good on not booting from a DRAMless drive. 

Apparently I was mis-remembering, the drive I was using in fact DID have DRAM and the one I replaced it with does not.  The issue I was having was the SLC cache filling up, not the lack of DRAM.

Still the same conclusion though, larger drives you are less likely to experience issues and especially if its mostly reading than writing you are doing.

[WolfyKilo]

UPDATE: I ended up getting a Crucial MX500 4TB since it was on sale. It has DRAM cashe. The other option was from a newer brand that I have never heard of before called Leven that didn't have DRAM for their 4TB drive. I didn't lose a single byte of data off of my old HDD after sacrificing another just like it and cloned it to the new SSD. Yet, It seems my old drive is still useable somehow! It was my first attempt to do my own data recovery and somehow I didn't f**k it up!