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Author Topic: Hard drive or SSD?  (Read 4502 times)

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quakebo

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Hard drive or SSD?
« on: October 16, 2021, 09:29:47 am »
I have a 3tb hard drive at the moment but I would like to get a ssd.  Now should I get a small ssd just for windows and my software and keep the roms and music on the hard drive or should I get a large ssd and keep everything on that?

slybunda

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2021, 11:34:24 am »
im using a spare 60gb ssd i had lying around and im finding it to be quite small but windows boots up and shuts down real fast on it with win7.
i need more space and im deciding on adding a mechanical drive or a bigger primary ssd. other than for boot the ssd is a wasted resource since rom loading is very quick due to small size. to keep noise and space usage inside the cab low im thinking of using a mechanical drive from a laptop.

Vocalitus

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2021, 07:21:09 pm »
Get a large drive (4TB max) and keep everything on that.

Get another large drive (external) and image the previous drive.

Keep the external drive in a safe place. 

We all forget to backup until it is too late.

BlueGhost

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2021, 02:52:01 am »
Get a SSD that is at least big enough to put your front end, and the front end media on.  This will make loading and scrolling trough the front end quicker and smother.  Roms can be on either SSD or hard drive.

slybunda

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2021, 04:12:17 am »
Forgot to mention, i have a home server which is setup like a NAS device, i have all roms on it and my other computers have mame setup with rom folder pointing to the network resource. That way i dont need roms on every computer that has mame. I dont have wifi in my bartop cab but since iv remembered this i think im gonna see if i can get a usb wifi adapter to do the job.

quakebo

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2021, 04:39:10 am »
Get a SSD that is at least big enough to put your front end, and the front end media on.  This will make loading and scrolling trough the front end quicker and smother.  Roms can be on either SSD or hard drive.

That's what I was thinking of doing as larger ssd are more expensive.

BlueGhost

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2021, 11:59:07 am »
Forgot to mention, i have a home server which is setup like a NAS device, i have all roms on it and my other computers have mame setup with rom folder pointing to the network resource. That way i dont need roms on every computer that has mame. I dont have wifi in my bartop cab but since iv remembered this i think im gonna see if i can get a usb wifi adapter to do the job.
This is how I do my console emulation.  All of my console roms take much more room than mame.

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Beretta

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #7 on: October 17, 2021, 09:57:43 pm »
We talking for your daily driver or a project?

I keep my rom sets on a 2tb external drive.

SSD's are great, but very expensive.. I use a smaller 256-512mb drive for windows and pair it up with a traditional spinner drive for bulk storage on most of my computers.

If we're talkinng about storage for a project if you can fit it on a small SSD then that would be great otherwise just go with a spinner.. it's not all that critical if it takes a few seconds to load a rom right?
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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2021, 10:36:38 pm »
Coming at it from a different perspective than storage and access speed for you to consider, I decided to go pure SSD on my build to eliminate noise and reduce heat.  Spinner drives, especially older ones, can get really noisy and quite hot depending on what you're doing.  I'm trying to keep my build as quite as possible and not require any additional fans outside of whats standard in the computer case.   If your rom set is just a few hundred classics you should get by with a smaller drive thans easily worth the money.  Jumping up to multiple TB is a different consideration if you really need that much space.  Then I might go with SSD for OS, apps, and as many of the primary games as possible.  That way the secondary spinner drive is accessed less frequent.

quakebo

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2021, 02:47:40 pm »
This is for my current bartop and I have a 1tb ssd to install and put windows, hyperspin with all artwork and videos as well as all my emulators and other software then put all my roms and music on my 3tb hard drive is what I was thinking or should I use a larger ssd and no hard drive.

Beretta

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2021, 02:59:18 pm »
This is for my current bartop and I have a 1tb ssd to install and put windows, hyperspin with all artwork and videos as well as all my emulators and other software then put all my roms and music on my 3tb hard drive is what I was thinking or should I use a larger ssd and no hard drive.

Well Me personally I wouldn't even bother with the expense of a ssd given once the roms are loaded.. they're loaded into memory

If you must go with a SSD then I would recommend windows and the roms be on it.. music and movies go on a spinner drive
If you have the money to spend then of course going all SSD cna't hurt.. but movies and music are going to very low intensity I/O activities.

You won't see any benefit on playback going with a SSD for that type of content.
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slybunda

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2021, 04:56:54 pm »
2.5inch laptop hdd is fairly quiet so could be a good option. most of them are very cheapo now since people swap them out for ssd and sell them on.

bobbyb13

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #12 on: October 19, 2021, 02:06:35 am »
Soon I will have nothing that runs on spin drive any longer.
Small SSDs (of a size quite adequate for a MAME box) are pretty damn cheap relatively speaking.

Macking TB size ones aren't cheap still of course, but even a 500gb Samsung EVO is under $100 these days.
Same size from another brand is nearly half that.

I won't live long enough to wear out the ones I already own I would bet.

And... not have to agonize over a dead spin drive which I had loaded CRTemudriver, GM, roms, all the extras, and a configured frontend onto..?
Even just cloning spin drives for the inevitable collapse is wasted time from my seat.
My time is worth more than a few $$ spent on superior tech.

I'm talking about boxes for dedicated MAME cabinets of course.
Your storage needs may differ.

For my stuff though,
Solid state all the way.
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Zebidee

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #13 on: October 19, 2021, 02:05:26 pm »
SSDs die too. I'm already having to replace one in my laptop.

In some situations HDDs may even last longer than SSDs.

I still have HDDs in my 40TB NAS.

But I like SSDs for OS drives in my cabs, they boot fast (and are easy to replace when they fail).
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slybunda

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #14 on: October 19, 2021, 02:37:21 pm »
Thats why i just stick to enterprise ssds now on.

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #15 on: October 19, 2021, 09:57:24 pm »
A modern OS basically demands an SSD, nobody is writing code that considers the seek speed of a regular HDD anymore, even basic operations can take minutes when they should take seconds.

MAME and most other emulators aren't going to care much.  Aside from CHDs, once a ROM is loaded it's loaded; things like Windows Defender trying to scan any file you access takes significantly longer than MAME itself takes to load.

Your main issue will be when a regular drive spins down to save energy / reduce noise, it'll take a while to spin back up again.

If you want to be futureproof then you'll want to be running a modern OS, which means you'll need an SSD at this point.

Downside of SSDs is they tend to fail without *any* warning.  With regular drives you tend to notice certain sounds that can act as a warning.  An SSD can seem fine one day, and be 100% dead the next.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2021, 09:58:59 pm by Haze »

bobbyb13

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #16 on: October 20, 2021, 02:30:21 am »
I didn't think SSDs died with that kind of regularity but coming from you gentlemen it is to be believed of course.
I have had zero issues with them and all but one of my spin drives are dead.

Generally you get what you pay for of course, but any SSD brand recommendations Andrew or Haze?
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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #17 on: October 20, 2021, 03:57:32 am »
I haven't had enough exp with SSD's to have one die yet, but it is true that a ssd can die much faster than a spinner if you do a lot of writing.

on the other hand the nature of a arcade cabinet not much is going to be written day-2-day so I'd think they'd last damn near forever really.

You can also speed up your boot time and reduce background load by cutting out the fat, there are some decent slim XP and 7 install discs out there,

I think windows 10 ameliorated is also cut back.. but I haven't tried that one.
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Zebidee

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #18 on: October 20, 2021, 07:32:08 am »
I didn't think SSDs died with that kind of regularity but coming from you gentlemen it is to be believed of course.
I have had zero issues with them and all but one of my spin drives are dead.

Generally you get what you pay for of course, but any SSD brand recommendations Andrew or Haze?

I don't know what brand to recommend, the usual suspects are all out there. I generally get WD Green myself for arcade cabs, 120GB SSD costs about 1/4 of a 1TB SSD yet is still buckets of space for OS drive with Windows 7 or 10, even for multiboot. That gives you most of the speed advantages. Then re-use old spinny HDDs for game roms, data and extras like multimedia.
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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #19 on: October 20, 2021, 02:30:21 pm »
properly setting up a computer for using an SSD is more important than anything else. if you go in assuming a drive is a drive is a drive... like whats been mentioned before, you start having failures. This is becasue the computer treats it like a conventional harddrive. an SSD is not a conventional drive and does not operate in the same ways.

Do you know how hard defragging an SSD is on an SSD? one.. it's not needed... and two... SSD's block write, where conventional spinning disks can seek out a specific bit and change it. so you end up rewriting the same blocks over and over and over and over and over to move tiny pieces of information (since the entire block needs to be rewritten if a small part is read/written.) depending on your disk, a 32k block could have to be rewritten 32 times over to shuffle a couple KB file around in a defrag. SSD's have 100% of the data available instantly. moving segmented files back together to sequentially read the data later is pointless when the entire disk structure is available instantly at any time.

LSS, don't ever run defrag on an SSD you'll grenade a considerable portion of your drives lifespan.

enabling things like TRIM allows garbage collection to happen much easier and faster and eliminate needless read/write cycles... and reduces the amount of read/write cycles the SSD does just in regular use. this will reduce your cell cycling probably 10 fold.

if you run an SSD, setup the drive with overprovisioning. Samsung SSD's make this super easy to do now. what this does is take about 10% of your drive and set it aside and leaves it untouched. when you eventually DO start having issues with sectors going wonky, the SSD simply stops using those bits and moves them over to freshy unused cells that have never in the drives lifetime been operated. this can extend the life of the drive many times over yet again.

SSD's are a lot more reliable than they used to be. Many people, myself included daily drive SSD computers (some of them going on 10 years old) with no issues since they are setup properly. I've tossed more platter drives in the trash in the last month than I have failed SSD's since I first started using them. (specifically 2 SSD's, both being Kingston Digital SSDNOW V300 drives if anybody wants to keep track)

plus... WD blue 1tb SSD's are 120 bucks. double the price of a comparable size platter drive, but really about as cheap and small as these things get these days...getting closer and closer into platter territory in terms of space and price... but getting many times over the speed of one.

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #20 on: October 20, 2021, 02:57:45 pm »
Don't know about other OS's but Windows 10 makes drive optimization pretty easy just using the GUI for whatever disks you are running, either mechanical or solid state, no risk of defragging an SSD there.

My view of the question is pretty simple, if you can afford an SSD for anything then use it in preference to a mechanical drive.

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #21 on: October 23, 2021, 04:42:42 am »
I use a ssd as bootdrive. All my other stuff is on a hdd.

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #22 on: October 23, 2021, 05:27:40 am »
If you are worrying that the SSD will fail then get the two of the same SSD and mirror them in RAID 1.

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Re: Hard drive or SSD?
« Reply #23 on: October 24, 2021, 10:02:29 am »
If you are worrying that the SSD will fail then get the two of the same SSD and mirror them in RAID 1.

Part of me feels like this isn't a great idea.  Good for speed and up to the second backup, but it will be wearing out the second drive at the same rate as the first.

I'd probably opt for automated revolving image creation on a big spinner in the middle of the night (or at whatever interval one is comfortable with.)