Storage 2.5" drive question

[ignsvn]

Wall of text warning.

I'm currently using a 1 Tb 3.5" 7200 RPM HDD. Western Digital something. It is a general purpose drive where I store files such as:
- Codes (imagine usage such as compilation, test, and automated build)
- Photoshop / Ai files
- E-books (Pdf)
- Game saves
- General docs
- Pics
- Music & Videos

I'm happy enough with this drive. As of now it's about 50% full, or around 500 GB used. Most are pics, codes, music & videos, photoshop stuffs.

I'm considering to get a 2.5" - 7mm drive to replace that one (well since most of the SFF cases here supports 2.5" - 7mm drive). Unfortunately, it's very hard to find a 2.5" 7mm 7200 RPM drive bigger than 500 GB.

So, the options I am thinking of:
- Get 500 GB, 7200 RPM drive (anything bigger grows to 9.5mm thick). Same speed but half storage space. I guess I have to get a NAS or something to move & store some of the less important files. On the plus side, these files can be shared with other family members.
- Get 1 TB, 5400 RPM drive (many are 7mm thick). But not sure if I can live with the speed downgrade. I previously used 5400 RPM drive before.. they were.. OK, but I wonder if now I can feel the speed difference after using 7200 RPM drive :/

Would love to know your inputs / any experience you can share.

* FYI I already have an 128 GB SSD for OS and apps, and I might consider to get a 512 GB in the future.

 

[Pedro]

A 5400 RPM HDD can be painful but they have their uses. If you use it as a dump/storage drive that you rarely access its far more tolerable. I pulled a 1TB 5400 RPM drive from my wifes laptop (replaced it with an SSD) and was thinking of using it as simple storage in my SFF build. Curious what other people think of these little 5400RPM HDD's.

 

[Necere]

I have a couple of 5400RPM 2.5" Seagate drives - one 2TB and a 5TB - that I use for game installations, media, and other bulk storage. I get around the slow load times by using part of my SSDs as a cache, via intel's Smart Response Technology on one machine, and a program called PrimoCache on the other. SRT is a pain to set up if you're trying to set up the cache on one partition of an SSD with the OS on a different partition on the same drive, as I am (the cache is limited to 64GB with SRT, so dedicating an SSD larger than that solely as a cache drive is a waste). PrimoCache, however, is pretty easy to set up, and offers more flexibility. It's $30, but the faster load times in games without having to have a massive SSD for the game installs (or worse, moving installs before playing) more than makes up for it.

Btw, you can often find 2.5" drives cheaper being sold as external drives. I think I paid $130 for the 5TB as a "Backup Plus" model, but shuck the enclosure and it's a standard SATA drive inside. Be careful though - some external WD drives are soldered right to a PCB with a USB port, and lack a SATA connector altogether.

 

[SeñorDonut]

I've a 1TB SSD as main storage and a 1TB 5400RPM drive as backup. It's great as a backup drive, but I wouldn't boot from one had I the choice, nor would I wish that upon my worst enemies.

 

[ignsvn]

Another problem is that I don't have a controlled environment where I can test different drive speed. Like I said in the first post, I used 5400 RPM drives before but they're on a different older laptop / system. They were slow but there's no way to tell if the hard drive was the only culprit.

Yesterday (before my post) I managed to test a 5400 RPM drive on my brother's iMac (I think it's the 2013 version). Opening 150 Mb file in Photoshop was actually quite OK, but I'm not sure with codes. At times, when we compile / build the code, a lot of smaller file fragments needs to be accessed.

Anyone of you have similar use case where you store some of your regularly used files in your 5400 RPM drive? Say where you open/save files like.. hundred of times a day?

 

[SeñorDonut]

I used to have a 5400RPM drive as a main drive and anything that needed to access small file fragments was painful.

 

[ignsvn]

Thanks a lot for the input, friends. After some considerations, I decided to get a 500 GB WD Black 7200 RPM. I calculated my needs, and for me, I feel that it's better to have the speed VS the space. I can utilize my external drives if I need space anyway. On top of it, WD Black comes with 5 years of warranty.

Now if you don't mind me OT-ing my own thread; What's your opinion regarding sidegrade/little upgrade to have M.2 slot?

Current: i5-4670 + H87i-Plus
Sidegrade: Ryzen R5 1400 (pre-owned), or R3 1300X (new) + Asrock B350 ITX.
The sidegrade would cost me about $285 (not including DDR4 RAM). The R5-1400 & R3-1300X prices are about the same.

As of now I have no need for M.2, but I think if in the future (say 4-5 years) we're gonna move to this standard & leave SATA, then..

 

[Midiamp]

Thanks a lot for the input, friends. After some considerations, I decided to get a 500 GB WD Black 7200 RPM. I calculated my needs, and for me, I feel that it's better to have the speed VS the space. I can utilize my external drives if I need space anyway. On top of it, WD Black comes with 5 years of warranty.

Now if you don't mind me OT-ing my own thread; What's your opinion regarding sidegrade/little upgrade to have M.2 slot?

Current: i5-4670 + H87i-Plus
Sidegrade: Ryzen R5 1400 (pre-owned), or R3 1300X (new) + Asrock B350 ITX.
The sidegrade would cost me about $285 (not including DDR4 RAM). The R5-1400 & R3-1300X prices are about the same.

As of now I have no need for M.2, but I think if in the future (say 4-5 years) we're gonna move to this standard & leave SATA, then..

Where do you live? How about Seagate Firecuda? It's available up to 2TB and it's 2,5" 7 mm thick.

For Asrock B350ITX, probably you mean AB 350 Gaming ITX? Don't forget about the M.2 slot placement on the back, for thermal reasons. Also, if you game a lot, choose 1300X, if you multitask a lot... Well... A disclaimer, frankly, there's no need for this "multitask" term to be thrown out occasionally, aside from automated processes, and processor rendering, high thread count today is still as worthless as Justin Bieber song for world peace. I'd go for 1300X, and invest in good cooling, either WC based or any Noctua based HSF.

For future proofing, I'm not sure your configuration can last 4-5 years. Although my disk drive is 5 years old now, I'm not so sure I'm going to keep it for much longer, probably going to migrate all the sensitive data to external or use docking. Make the drive offline to extend its MTBF time.

 

[ignsvn]

Where do you live? How about Seagate Firecuda? It's available up to 2TB and it's 2,5" 7 mm thick.

For Asrock B350ITX, probably you mean AB 350 Gaming ITX? Don't forget about the M.2 slot placement on the back, for thermal reasons. Also, if you game a lot, choose 1300X, if you multitask a lot... Well... A disclaimer, frankly, there's no need for this "multitask" term to be thrown out occasionally, aside from automated processes, and processor rendering, high thread count today is still as worthless as Justin Bieber song for world peace. I'd go for 1300X, and invest in good cooling, either WC based or any Noctua based HSF.

For future proofing, I'm not sure your configuration can last 4-5 years. Although my disk drive is 5 years old now, I'm not so sure I'm going to keep it for much longer, probably going to migrate all the sensitive data to external or use docking. Make the drive offline to extend its MTBF time.

I considered but then again Firecuda is only as good as its 8GB SSD part.. other than that it's still 5400 RPM drive .

Yes that AB350 Gaming ITX. Well to be fair I'm not a hardcore gamer. I don't multitask that much either. I just want my Windows to start quickly, code to compile reasonably fast and my browser doesn't crash with 30+ tabs opened. Bonus if I can seamlessly ALT+TAB between games & works.

This is embarrassing, but the benefit of M.2 is that.. I'm ready with the smallest cases here which only carry 1 drive And yes, on a 2nd thought, even if the M.2 theoretically last, other slots/ports in the mobo will eventually change.

 

[Midiamp]

I considered but then again Firecuda is only as good as its 8GB SSD part.. other than that it's still 5400 RPM drive .

Yes that AB350 Gaming ITX. Well to be fair I'm not a hardcore gamer. I don't multitask that much either. I just want my Windows to start quickly, code to compile reasonably fast and my browser doesn't crash with 30+ tabs opened. Bonus if I can seamlessly ALT+TAB between games & works.

This is embarrassing, but the benefit of M.2 is that.. I'm ready with the smallest cases here which only carry 1 drive And yes, on a 2nd thought, even if the M.2 theoretically last, other slots/ports in the mobo will eventually change.

I'm partial to drive speed. Perhaps I'm using a cheap ass 7200 RPM Toshiba drive that when the drive spun the sound is quite annoying. Probably since I used the drive as idle storage, I didn't mind the drive speed.

For slots/ports, I might be too overboard, but in 5 years time, SSD price will probably dropped and its capacity increased, while HDD prices will probably dropped to ridiculous level that 5TB is the mainstream storage.

For code compiling I thought IPC is still preferable? If that's so, then your bet is still better with Intel side. However like you said, it's a sidegrade and if you go with the 1300X, the clock speed will help. Also, probably Ryzen+ or whatever the revision is going to be called will be release Q1 next year, so you can upgrade to whatever is available next. I'm in Indonesia, so at best we'll be getting the Ryzen revision April-May.

 

[Soul_Est]

I'm partial to drive speed. Perhaps I'm using a cheap ass 7200 RPM Toshiba drive that when the drive spun the sound is quite annoying. Probably since I used the drive as idle storage, I didn't mind the drive speed.

For slots/ports, I might be too overboard, but in 5 years time, SSD price will probably dropped and its capacity increased, while HDD prices will probably dropped to ridiculous level that 5TB is the mainstream storage.

For code compiling I thought IPC is still preferable? If that's so, then your bet is still better with Intel side. However like you said, it's a sidegrade and if you go with the 1300X, the clock speed will help. Also, probably Ryzen+ or whatever the revision is going to be called will be release Q1 next year, so you can upgrade to whatever is available next. I'm in Indonesia, so at best we'll be getting the Ryzen revision April-May.

For code compiling it depends on the code, however more threads are preferrable. It is partially for that reason that Ryzen and ThreadRipper are as successful as they are. Ryzen+ will definitely increase that advantage.