Alternatives to One Big SSD
Make no mistake, if you need a lot of storage space for your PC, the easiest thing you can do is buy an SSD large enough to accommodate all your needs. But it’s not the cheapest or most effective option. If you really want to optimize your computer, you should try some alternatives.
Add a second SSD dedicated to demanding things like video games
Of course, this mainly concerns players, but it is still valuable advice. Games will run fine being stored on your main operating system, but there are some advantages to getting a second dedicated SSD for them. First of all, by dividing the load of gaming and regular PC operations between two separate SSDs, you will extend their lifespan to some extent, because you won’t be using a single SSD for literally everything on your PC. Be careful, wear occurs mainly during write cycles and you won’t write much to the disk when loading level data, but load balancing doesn’t hurt.
Second, even though SSDs are fast, they can potentially slow down a bit if they start to fill up, so the performance of each SSD alone might be a bit better than if everything was crammed onto a single SSD.
Separating files in this way also provides some level of redundancy, as even SSDs are not immune to data corruption. With two SSDs, you have at least one survivor if something happens to the other. You can always back up data to either storage device, but having layers of redundancy certainly doesn’t hurt.
Get a large hard drive for data that doesn’t require lightning-fast read and write speeds
Hard drives are objectively inferior to SSDs, far behind in terms of performance, especially in terms of speed. But the fact is that not all files on your PC need high speed. Operating system files and video games would absolutely benefit from an SSD, but most other files can be placed on a 4TB hard drive and won’t suffer any loss in performance or quality. Music, movies, old photos and videos, backups, and even operating system images are all things you probably only access occasionally, and they don’t need the blazing speeds of an SSD.
Not only are regular hard drives a reliable way to store all that non-critical data, they’re also much cheaper than SSDs. Even a 4TB hard drive will only cost you around $70-$90 these days. With this type of storage setup, not only can you keep your SSD free of bulky files that don’t need to be there, but you can even save money by freeing up so much space that you just need to buy a smaller SSD to fit your needs in the first place.
Move your user folders to another drive
I think everyone has a ton of files in their user folders, cluttering the “Documents” and “Downloads” tabs. I’m sure some people sort through them from time to time, but I definitely don’t, and they end up taking up a lot of space on my main SSD. Why leave this as is? Most people don’t actually need the gigabytes of files in their user folders. But if you don’t want to delete them completely, you can at least move them to another drive.
To do this, click on the folder you want to move, select “Properties”, go to the “Location” tab and choose a new location on a separate drive. This generally won’t break any dependencies (in rare cases, some software may be disrupted by the moved files, but you can always move them if that becomes a problem), but it will free up space on your SSD. And hey, you may even find items in these user folders worth deleting while you’re at it. You’d be surprised how much space you could free up.
Setting up a NAS can be a bit complicated, but it’s a fantastic addition to a primary SSD, especially when you’re using it for archive data or media streaming. These items don’t need to waste space on your SSD. If you have an SSD-only PC, it’s best to keep your high-priority data on the SSD while moving all that other data elsewhere. You can transfer photos, backups, or your Plex library, among other things, to save space.
If you don’t want to purchase a NAS, you can always create your own. You can turn an old PC into a NAS with the right equipment and know-how. This will allow your SSD to maintain its lifespan without the wear and tear of write-heavy backups from photos, videos, and streaming. Sure, setting up your own NAS is naturally more complicated than just buying a big SSD, but it’s more efficient if you know how to do it.
Ultimately, there are many different ways to configure your PC’s storage, and it’s really a balance between simplicity and cost or a little added complexity and efficiency. Ultimately, it’s not like your PC will suffer greatly from using a single large SSD, but there are better ways of doing things if you pay attention to them. If you don’t have pressing storage issues, you might not even need to do anything fancy with your storage. There are also other ways to optimize storage in Windows.
