Second HDD?

[buck91]

Purchased a Acer Predator two years ago (which has been awesome, BTW) but it only came with a single 250gb SSD. This is somewhat frustrating as it cannot handle too many of these fancy new games installed at the same time. I would like to install a second HDD/SSD (there is space) but unsure of what to get. I am thinking another SSD for speed and so I don't have to decide what apps/files go on which driver but any suggestions?

 

[Leo99]

You don't need SSD for storage. But they are cool and silent. A regular HDD could be 1TB or 2TB for not much money.

 

[buck91]

True but I don't store much anymore. I literally have like 4 games and I'm full.

 

[mk378]

Since you will want quick access to everything game-related, I suggest buying another SSD, a large one, and move everything over and retire the 250 GB one. The complexity of having stuff on two different drives isn't worth the relatively little extra space. This is a good time to buy SSDs, you can get a 1 TB for about $120.

 

[redhat]

Do you know if your current SSD is NVMe or SATA?

You might have a M.2 form factor SSD that of which is NVMe bus (PCI-Express). Or it might be a M.2 form factor SATA bus SSD.

Either way, if you replace that, you might have to replace with similar style. Or if you have a second M.2 slot, you might be able to add another SATA M.2 SSD. Or if you have a 2.5" drive bay, you can add a 2.5" SATA SSD (or regular hard drive).

 

[mk378]

If its one of the tower model Predators it's almost certainly set up for multiple SATA drives. SATA drives are a separate box connected to the mother board with a cable and to the power supply with another cable.

M.2 is a small circuit board that plugs into a horizontal slot in the mother board. These are often found in laptops and sometimes in compact business-style desktops.

 

[FordBroncoVWJeta]

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-480GB-Solid-State-SDSSDA-480G-G26/dp/B01F9G46Q8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ssd&qid=1556242673&refinements=p_n_feature_three_browse-bin%3A14027459011&rnid=6797515011&s=pc&sr=1-1

 

[maxdustington]

If you play games get a 1 or 2 tb. My steam library has grown a lot just from freebies and offers that I cannot refuse during Steam sales.

Some games are also massive. I know my Arma 3 folder was approaching 200gb at one point.

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by mk378
Since you will want quick access to everything game-related, I suggest buying another SSD, a large one, and move everything over and retire the 250 GB one. The complexity of having stuff on two different drives isn't worth the relatively little extra space. This is a good time to buy SSDs, you can get a 1 TB for about $120.


Unless he's got an NVMe SSD, like what redhat brought up. If that's the case, I'd buy a 1-2tb SATA ssd and put all my games on there, while leaving the system on the faster NVMe.

 

[NO2]

There is no reason not to get a reasonable sized SSD unless you need very large amounts of storage. They are generally a lot more reliable. Just get a name brand one that is reasonably fast. Get 1Tb or 2TB if you can afford it.

 

[bobdoo]

The sandisk ssd's are nice. I've bought one for FIL, and one for sata to usb backups.

 

[SubieRubyRoo]

If you want a truly fast SSD, there are two games in town, then all of the companies that buy their (last-gen) tech from others. Samsung 970 Pro or Evo+, and Intel PCIe drives with Optane. Everything else is on par with the last (or two generations) of the Samsung/Intel offerings. And there's no huge discount either. You get what you pay for.