suggestions for a second hard drive

johnwhelan · Jun 30, 2018

I've picked up a Dell T3619 which has a 250 gig SSD boot drive and its very easy to add a second drive. The motherboard supports more than two but adding a third drive looks more complex.

I'm undecided between a 4or 6 TB WD gold drive or an SSD of say 500 gig to a TB. My current main system has 4TB of hard disk and 750 gigs of SSD.

It runs TANE and lots of other things so uses about 75% of the space available.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks John

PC_Ace · Jun 30, 2018

Guess it really all comes down to whether or not you want to go for a larger capacity (and more affordable) WD 4 to 6Tb HDD - or a faster, lower power-draw SSD.
How much stuff do you expect to dump onto the new Dell, in the near term and eventually?
If it is a lot, then a modern, high density drive like the WD Gold series is a great choice. My 3Tb enterprise one ranks fairly high on the performance stakes on the UserBenchMarks ratings.

On the other hand, I'm leaning towards all SSD rigs these days as the cost of NAND and higher capacity SATA and PCIe SSDs is falling fast at last.

johnwhelan · Jun 30, 2018

PC_Ace said:
Guess it really all comes down to whether or not you want to go for a larger capacity (and more affordable) WD 4 to 6Tb HDD - or a faster, lower power-draw SSD.
How much stuff do you expect to dump onto the new Dell, in the near term and eventually?
If it is a lot, then a modern, high density drive like the WD Gold series is a great choice. My 3Tb enterprise one ranks fairly high on the performance stakes on the UserBenchMarks ratings.

On the other hand, I'm leaning towards all SSD rigs these days as the cost of NAND and higher capacity SATA and PCIe SSDs is falling fast at last.

That pretty well sums it up. The 8 tb gold drive has a 256 mb cache and with that much cache how much faster would an SSD be?

Cheerio John

PC_Ace · Jun 30, 2018

Mine has 256Mb cache too - and it reads and writes really fast for sustained loads, though not nearly as fast as any of my SSDs.
Biggest drawback with any older-style rust-based HHDs is the NOISE they create whilst in use. Mine is disconcertingly loud for example when operating/ transferring T:ANE backups, etc. particularly the many smaller file packets involved.
No problem whatsoever when idle.
Wouldn't be a problem if you have better suppression of noise in your tower case than mine.

Solid state drives are silent during most ops, and generate less heat since they draw less power.
On the other hand, high density large capacity drives like WD Gold series 7200RPM drives represent good value for money.
Hybrid drives are another consideration, but since you already have an SSD boot drive, unnecessary in your case.
Again, I'd say it all comes back to your planned use for the drive. Is it networked via a LAN to your existing desktop?
Balancing use of various rigs across a GB LAN network is always a smart proposition.
Have your fastest rig house the programs you use regularly and store the most frequently used files and documents there too.
Just about everything else can be transferred to the second or third PCs according to their content access priority requirements.

suggestions for a second hard drive

johnwhelan

Well-known member

PC_Ace

Hauling Heavy Pixels

johnwhelan

Well-known member

PC_Ace

Hauling Heavy Pixels

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