Questions re hybrid drive choice and usage

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I would use an SSD that is the size of your programs folders plus at least 100GB for the OS plus another 20-25% of the total. I still strongly recommend keeping your programs on your C: drive.

What all do you have in your programs folders to make them so huge? Are you a gamer?

Yes, i game a lot. The folder is often several hundred GB in size. Nice as it would be to load up games so fast, i don't think that's going to be possible for me (aside from maybe one or two). Sounds like a 128GB drive would be best.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Here in the U.S., a 500GB Samsung EVO is only $170 USD. If you can't swing that, you can put the games on the HDD but I would put them on a separate partition to simplify backups. In that case, a 128GB SSD will be enough (that's what I have in my current rig).

I'll consider it, at least. If i would use a HDD, what would you suggest there? I'm seeing other people advise 7200 RPM, but i've got nothing on recommended cache size yet, or brand. Reliability is a big deal for me, since my drives never seem to last long (i don't give my pc any hard knocks or anything either, so i really don't know why). It's one of the reasons why i wanted to spread some of the load to an SSD, especially since it lacks moving parts.

Saw this one while searching, which also seems good:

Crucial MX300 2,5" 750GB - Specificaties - Tweakers

Expensive though. Cheapest 500GB one i saw was 133 (with the EVO at 144), which is about the same as buying a 1TB HDD and 128GB SSD together, but 500 just doesn't seem like quite enough space, especially if i have to substract 20% of the capacity to maintain performance. Having everything on an SSD though, without having to move files around, seems awfully tempting. Just need to make sure i treat the thing well, like not be an idiot and defrag the thing. I have no expereince with them, so i'm just going off of whatever advice i find online, but i don't know what i might have missed.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

For HDDs installed inside a computer, I always recommend Western Digital (WD) Blacks. Until recently (last month), when I replaced them with SSDs, I had three of them inside my computer. One of them had 1233.9 days of power on time. All of them were still showing all Good S.M.A.R.T. attributes. These are 7200rpm drives. Many people complain that they are noisy but I haven't had any problems with mine making noise (one possible explanation for that is the HDDs were solidly screwed into place instead of in a tray that could vibrate). These are considered to be performance drives so one would be good for running your games from.

The 7200rpm HGSTs have an excellent reputation (although I have no actual experience with them) so you may want to look into them.

The 5400rpm WD Blues are good for external backup drives but I do not recommend them for use in a computer unless the computer is rarely used. I used the 5400rpm Blues' predecessor, the WD Greens, for my backup drives (which were also recently replaced with SSDs).

I have such a HGST drive, and it's only lasted for 2 years (if my suspicions about the noise it's making are correct). I'll try switching to a WD black, though i think that was the kind of drive i had before this one, which lasted just as long before it died.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I also recommend the Samsungs (Crucial has had a checkered history). For SATA boot drives, especially in desktop machines, I recommend the 850 Pros (I've been happy with the 840 Pro in my desktop). That's not to say the EVOs aren't also good. My notebooks get light, occasional usage so the 500GB EVOs I put in them have served me well.

All very useful, from both of you. I'll keep it in mind. I did notice that page doesn't seem to list the other tip i found though, that suggests turning off indexing for the SSD.