1 large SSD or 2 small SSDs

[Tweed]

Should I get a 1TB SSD or 2 500GB SSDs? Disregarding price, I'd like to know what are the benefits/cons of going for one route over the other? People have told me multiple answers and I have a hard time deciding which to listen to. If I go 2 SSDs, I'll have OS and applications (video editing, graphic design, animating applications) on one, games (Overwatch, COD BO III, Battlefront, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Virtual Reality stuff) on the other. Or should I have it all on one large SSD?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 big one. Anouther part to fail. Less power usage. Less stuff to pess with. 

 

You not going to have a bandwidth problem with one ssd.

[m0k]

there would be no benefit in performance if you have 2 separate SSD's
just buy the 1 large ssd

or if you buy 2, put them in raid 0

[pcshme33]

I would get 1 ssd. Raid 0 doesn't really do any good as if one drive fails, you lose everything. (I learned the hard way)

[Verrierr]

2 smaller ones. If one fails you get to keep the second one (-_-)

[Prindagelf]

1 minute ago, Verrierr said:

2 smaller ones. If one fails you get to keep the second one (-_-)

for this reason, you need to back up everything on a cloud server or other secondary hard drive, still no real need for a 2nd SSD

[Kadleli]

1 large.

[Verrierr]

Just now, Prindagelf said:

for this reason, you need to back up everything on a cloud server or other secondary hard drive, still no real need for a 2nd SSD

I guess it's hard to recognize sarcasm when it's written text...

[Prindagelf]

Just now, Verrierr said:

I guess it's hard to recognize sarcasm when it's written text...

what is sarcasm? o.0

[SageOfSpice]

In your case, probably just a singular drive.

 

Singular:

+Simple

+One component to worry about

+Easier to configure

+Don't have to worry about fopping around with making sure things install the the correct drives

+Don't have to worry about second drive failing

+Don't have to worry as much about performance degradation as the capacity is filled

-Theoretically half the bandwidth

-Always being utilized to some degree by background processes

 

Multiple:

-Complex

-Multiple components to worry about

-Annoying to configure

-Easy to reach individual capacity on smaller drives

+Independent transfer rates

+Theoretically twice the bandwidth

+Dedicated resource to OS or Shared Folders

+Lesser likelihood of losing EVERYTHING when one drive fails

 

 

So... There are reasons to use multiple drives, but not for your purposes.

If you wanted to keep games and general programs separate on a single drive, it'd be better to set up a virtual partition so that the area of the disk you keep your games on is perceived as a separate drive, but exists on the same physical SSD.

[aisle9]

One large with backup either to a cloud or to a HDD. The "0" in "RAID 0" stands for the number of files that will survive if something goes wrong.

[Tweed]

So it's better to have everything on one SSD? Games, OS, applications and all?

[Antistatic12]

From personal experience I would say get the one SSD.
I have used multiple SSD's and SSD's in Raid 0. Weirdly I always found raid 0 was fast in areas but lagged in others.  I would prefer to have all my stuff on just 1 SSD, but it wasn't an option when building  my rig.
If you are into how your PC looks, you might prefer one SSD as it is easier to hide than two, depending on your case.