Lost with my storage

[Capo]

Sorry if this is not the correct place to post and Thank You in advance for any and all help.   As the title says, I am lost with my storage options.  I just installed a new SATA SSD (G) and also have two NVMe one is my OS (C) and the other (F). My reasons for extra storage were for my games as my desktop is mainly for that but I occasionally do some work from that device as well, such as Adobe illustrator and photoshop at times.  I would like to keep as much as possible off the C drive when it comes to files and apps. That led me to my next thought should the F drive have an OS on it as well just in case the C drive dies? Or should I just back up my PC on a USB drive or the new ssd? Games that have launchers or apps such as steam or EA would those need to be relocated to F or can I run those from the ssd? Is this even the correct thing to do with my storage or saving my drives and getting the most life and use out of them.  Sorry if it doesn't make sense I can try to clarify as much as possible moving forward!

[Kisai]

The optimal configuration is 

 

Fastest SSD -> Your OS, Your applications, and the games you are actively playing

Mechanical drive -> Games you aren't actively playing, data you want to keep backups of

 

Steam makes it pretty easy to delegate a drive to a specific game. (G is not a SSD, this is a weird bug that isn't showing the drive name) C and S are SSD's, G is USB and H is a 18TB WD Red Pro.

 

Just keep in mind that certain applications malfunction if they are not on the C drive. Games funny enough (other than games purchased from the Windows Store) will usually behave as long as the path they are installed to isn't too deep. Adobe products are unfortunately one of the things that really hates not being installed to C, and when you setup scratch drives for Photoshop or Premiere, you usually do NOT want to use your SSD as the scratch drive. You can, but this is akin to using the C drive as a page file. It imposes additional wear on the drive, which is why when you switch to a SSD you should maximize the RAM you can install just so that the OS has less reason to page out. Remember, there are scenarios where Windows will consume ALL available disk space if you don't explicitly set a limit to the page file.

 

So you have to weigh that possibility against turning off the page file and just having the computer straight lock up if it hits a scenario where it can't allocate more memory. Just the previous night, I had left firefox open, and when I got up this morning firefox had consumed all the GPU memory and enough system memory that video wouldn't play.

 

[Robchil]

7 hours ago, Capo said:

Sorry if this is not the correct place to post and Thank You in advance for any and all help.   As the title says, I am lost with my storage options.  I just installed a new SATA SSD (G) and also have two NVMe one is my OS (C) and the other (F). My reasons for extra storage were for my games as my desktop is mainly for that but I occasionally do some work from that device as well, such as Adobe illustrator and photoshop at times.  I would like to keep as much as possible off the C drive when it comes to files and apps. That led me to my next thought should the F drive have an OS on it as well just in case the C drive dies? Or should I just back up my PC on a USB drive or the new ssd? Games that have launchers or apps such as steam or EA would those need to be relocated to F or can I run those from the ssd? Is this even the correct thing to do with my storage or saving my drives and getting the most life and use out of them.  Sorry if it doesn't make sense I can try to clarify as much as possible moving forward!

 

Depending on the size of your nvme's realy. 

Always keep your OS on your fastest drive, but today you can get quite large nvme's.. is it below 500GB i would consider upgrading. 

 

Myself i have 2 500 GB nvme's in a Raid0 for boot.. i use cloud storage for pictures and documents, and most game clients have cloud storage for saves, and now two SSD's on Sata ports 1Tb and 2Tb, for games, testing for work, etc. 

All drives will die in the end, sometimes it can come quicker than expected but i would not worry bout that until it happens. 

 

Generally take backup of the critical files like documents and pictures you don't want to loose, the rest are downloadable more or less. Keep an updated install USB with a copy of newer drivers for your system. 

 

 

[Capo]

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

The optimal configuration is 

 

Fastest SSD -> Your OS, Your applications, and the games you are actively playing

Mechanical drive -> Games you aren't actively playing, data you want to keep backups of

 

Steam makes it pretty easy to delegate a drive to a specific game. (G is not a SSD, this is a weird bug that isn't showing the drive name) C and S are SSD's, G is USB and H is a 18TB WD Red Pro.

 

Just keep in mind that certain applications malfunction if they are not on the C drive. Games funny enough (other than games purchased from the Windows Store) will usually behave as long as the path they are installed to isn't too deep. Adobe products are unfortunately one of the things that really hates not being installed to C, and when you setup scratch drives for Photoshop or Premiere, you usually do NOT want to use your SSD as the scratch drive. You can, but this is akin to using the C drive as a page file. It imposes additional wear on the drive, which is why when you switch to a SSD you should maximize the RAM you can install just so that the OS has less reason to page out. Remember, there are scenarios where Windows will consume ALL available disk space if you don't explicitly set a limit to the page file.

 

So you have to weigh that possibility against turning off the page file and just having the computer straight lock up if it hits a scenario where it can't allocate more memory. Just the previous night, I had left firefox open, and when I got up this morning firefox had consumed all the GPU memory and enough system memory that video wouldn't play.

 

it is funny you bring that up as that is my overall concern about the crashes that I DO get, and the one culprit was an adobe checker I believe. When I got this PC it had 8gb of RAM I went to 16GB and i do not feel that is enough as is, meaning sometimes i look at the monitor and see its high (or what i think is high but if a game need is 11G and I have 5G of it already being used elsewhere??? then yea its crashing).  My main C is on the NVMe that came with this PC its a kingston 500GB. I was never comfortable with that so i got another NVMe that is a Crucial 1TB and had been storing most things there from that time forward. This SSD is a Samsung EVO 1TB bought for reasons listed in prior post. I know the extra stuff needs to come off the C but now I am wondering how to get the C drive bigger without messing up my OS. Or would that be smarter to clear the my F(which is games mostly) and move the OS there? or can it be on both drives? is that a thing?

 

Im newer to the gaming PC side so im not trying to ruin the PC but i do want it to run well. Not saying im a advanced PC guy i just know basic stuff from use all these years. 

[Capo]

1 hour ago, Robchil said:

 

Depending on the size of your nvme's realy. 

Always keep your OS on your fastest drive, but today you can get quite large nvme's.. is it below 500GB i would consider upgrading. 

 

Myself i have 2 500 GB nvme's in a Raid0 for boot.. i use cloud storage for pictures and documents, and most game clients have cloud storage for saves, and now two SSD's on Sata ports 1Tb and 2Tb, for games, testing for work, etc. 

All drives will die in the end, sometimes it can come quicker than expected but i would not worry bout that until it happens. 

 

Generally take backup of the critical files like documents and pictures you don't want to loose, the rest are downloadable more or less. Keep an updated install USB with a copy of newer drivers for your system. 

 

 

C: is NVMe 500GB  I personally don't like these numbers for storage or it being the main drive and it being a Kingston, I feel it is low quality and could be wrong about this, but I'd be ok upgrading this one.

 

F: is  NVMe 1 TB from Crucial mostly games here was the initial " move games and apps here" drive until I was told to not have anything on the c but the program files etc etc. that led me to the new SSD which is

 

G: SSD Samsung EVO 870 1 TB   ran into my roadblock here trying to move launchers and realizing that C is the lone drive actually working and that cant be good if all programs launchers are on the main drive. 

 

My thought is the SSD is the one to deal with this and probably should be my main drive now. As I stated in the other response, I was having a few crash problems Memory management mostly but not often just more than I would like to see. I had a feeling it was a RAM issue for sure but now im thinking my storage is playing in to that being 500GB. I already have a backup on a USB when i got this PC i probably need to do another now so im not scared to lose everything per se, just not trying to wear it out with writing/deleting on the main C drive, whichever one it is or becomes. Probably over thinking this so I do apologize as im newer to this side of PCs in a way.   

 

THANK YOU BOTH FOR YOUR QUICK REPLIES

[dkoudijs]

Others have suggested good ideas. Have you tried to run any disk checks on your c drive? TO see if any obvious issues exist?

Having the launchers on the c drive isn't nessisarly a bad thing, as once they launch at start up, they really don't do much but it would help with your boot time.

[Robchil]

2 hours ago, Capo said:

C: is NVMe 500GB  I personally don't like these numbers for storage or it being the main drive and it being a Kingston, I feel it is low quality and could be wrong about this, but I'd be ok upgrading this one.

 

F: is  NVMe 1 TB from Crucial mostly games here was the initial " move games and apps here" drive until I was told to not have anything on the c but the program files etc etc. that led me to the new SSD which is

 

G: SSD Samsung EVO 870 1 TB   ran into my roadblock here trying to move launchers and realizing that C is the lone drive actually working and that cant be good if all programs launchers are on the main drive. 

 

My thought is the SSD is the one to deal with this and probably should be my main drive now. As I stated in the other response, I was having a few crash problems Memory management mostly but not often just more than I would like to see. I had a feeling it was a RAM issue for sure but now im thinking my storage is playing in to that being 500GB. I already have a backup on a USB when i got this PC i probably need to do another now so im not scared to lose everything per se, just not trying to wear it out with writing/deleting on the main C drive, whichever one it is or becomes. Probably over thinking this so I do apologize as im newer to this side of PCs in a way.   

 

THANK YOU BOTH FOR YOUR QUICK REPLIES

Use Crystaldiskmark to test your drives.  a normal gen 3 nvme should be around 3500 MB read write. gen 4 around 7000, 

your SSD are max 600Mb pr sec since that is the Sata controller limit. 

[Capo]

11 hours ago, dkoudijs said:

Others have suggested good ideas. Have you tried to run any disk checks on your c drive? TO see if any obvious issues exist?

Having the launchers on the c drive isn't nessisarly a bad thing, as once they launch at start up, they really don't do much but it would help with your boot time.

i believe i have that all turned off on start up as is except maybe steam i have more games through there. only time ive ran anything wqas through the dos box/command thing(sorry I dont know what its called now) but it always came back "healthy"  i just ran the crystaldisk and will be posting those results for everyone to look at. 

 

[Capo]

10 hours ago, Robchil said:

Use Crystaldiskmark to test your drives.  a normal gen 3 nvme should be around 3500 MB read write. gen 4 around 7000, 

your SSD are max 600Mb pr sec since that is the Sata controller limit. 

thank you for the link to this I have ran it and these are the results. 

I'm assuming the C is not great. Everything else from what you had said seems to be on point.