New pc build - 2tb ssd - single partition or?

Dpoirier

Dpoirier

Fractal Fanatic
Hey all, I know there are a lot of very knowledgeable people here, so...

I'm assembling a new Windows pc with a 2tb ssd and a 2tb hdd. My question is about partitioning the ssd:

- with a single partition, I'm not wasting any space resulting from over-allocating for the OS and apps... but in my mind it's a bit messy (even though Windows deals well with it), and I'm not sure if it's as flexible for doing disk imaging for backups and restore options?

- with a partition for the OS and apps, I have no idea how much space to allocate. My old pc has a 120 Gb partition, but it's very very full (and that was windows 10). At the same time, I don't want to overdo it and end up with a lot of unused disc space... 250gb maybe?

I'm sure I haven't thought of all the pros and cons of the two options, so I'm hoping for some opinions and advice.

Thanks!
 
There are zero good reasons to partition a single hard drive for use with one OS in this day and age. Windows will automatically steal some space for the recovery partition on whatever you deem to be the master boot drive, but otherwise NTFS the whole thing as single partition.
 
Last edited:
You won't get any performance enhancements from partitioning a SSD. It's one of its many benefits. I do all my DAW work with a single, unpartitioned 2TB SSD and it's blazing fast. OS, plugins, and samples all on the same volume. Acronis handles all the backups both locally and to their cloud.
 
If your board has an M.2 slot (my board has 4 and they are all used), go that route rather than SSD via SATA. Much faster. I agree with others, partitioning has no big benefits these days. I run a 250GB M.2 for my system drive, a 1TB M.2 for a sandbox and 2x2TB M.2's (one for video projects and one for audio projects). All my libraries are on my audio M.2.
 
iaresee said:
There are zero good reasons to partition a single hard drive for use with one OS in this day and age. Windows will automatically steal some space for the recovery partition on whatever you deem to be the master boot drive, but otherwise NTFS the whole thing as single partition.
Click to expand...
This.
 
I also prefer keeping my apps and data separate because it's cleaner in my mind. All my data is in one place and it simplifies reinstalling windows by eliminating the need to make another backup & restore it, or download & install hundreds of GBs of sample libraries, steam game library, etc.

My most recent build has a 1TB M.2 PCIe gen5 for windows and a 2TB M.2 PCIe gen4 for data. But a couple PCs ago my mobo only had one M.2 slot so I simply partitioned it 500gb for windows and the rest for data. 500gb was and still is pretty overkill for me though, I could easily go smaller for that partition. I might partition the 1TB drive if I need more space for data in a few years.

But as others have said, M.2 pcie is much faster than SATA so if your board has an M.2 slot that supports pcie, use it for your system drive. Wouldn't want to use HDDs in a PC these days, I only use them in my NAS which I use for Plex, adguard home, homebridge, and backups.
 
Last edited:
strabes said:
But as others have said, M.2 is much faster than SATA so if your board has an M.2 slot, use it for your system drive.
Click to expand...
M.2 is a form factor, which comes in SATA, or NVMe/PCIe. Some motherboards accommodate both but the newer boards are dropping M.2 SATA.
M.2 NVMe/PCIe is faster than M.2 SATA so it's important to make this distinction.

https://www.crucial.com/articles/about-ssd/m2-with-pcie-or-sata

I would suggest going the M.2 NVMe/PCIe route, but whether you can or not will depend on your motherboard specs. Going this way you can throw everything on the same drive/same partition, and it'll handle it all.

Having said that, I've chosen to use multiple drives (of the same type) for the same reason strabes states in his first sentence.
I also have a clone of the system drive as a backup so if the drive dies I can just swap it out and be up & running in about ten minutes.

I can't speak highly enough about the Samsung Pro series drives. With the Magician software that comes with them, it makes it a breeze to Manage/Clone/Migrate drives.
Absolutely no need for hdd anymore considering the cost of SSD's these days.

Since you said you are building a new PC, I'd strongly recommend researching the Motherboard first & foremost & understanding it's limitations because that's where any choke points are going to happen.
 
Last edited:
I have 4 x 2TB M.2's so I beg to disagree.

In fact if I swapped them out for 4 Samsung 4TB drives, I think space would be well covered.
 
Last edited:
iaresee said:
That's really very little space.

I'm running 76 TB here. 7 x 14 TB drives in RAID 5. That's only possible with old school spinning platter tech.
Click to expand...
I guess it's a matter of horses for courses. I'd say for the average user, 8TB (with the option of easily doubling that) of space is plenty.

The point is, your comment about HDD's still being "necessary" isn't correct IMHO. At least for the average user.

The amount of space you have available is for niche uses and isn't considered the norm for most.

I'd be genuinely interested to know what one does with that amount of space. I could imagine maybe editing feature length movies or the like. Could you enlighten me please?
 
Last edited:
Zedhed said:
I guess it's a matter of horses for courses. I'd say for the average user, 8TB (with the option of easily doubling that) of space is plenty.

The point is, your comment about HDD's still being "necessary" isn't correct IMHO. At least for the average user.

The amount of space you have available is for niche uses and isn't considered the norm for most.

I'd be genuinely interested to know what one does with that amount of space. I could imagine maybe editing feature length movies or the like. Could you enlighten me please?
Click to expand...

That kind of setup is what I would expect to see on a NAS or SAN appliance. So he probably has a pretty interesting use case for it.
 
Zedhed said:
The point is, your comment about HDD's still being "necessary" isn't correct IMHO. At least for the average user.
Click to expand...
If you have to make a bunch of qualifying statements about why you're correct, you're probably not.

HDDs are the only cost-effective option for high density.

I'm glad 8 TB works for you. But 8 TB isn't even close to high density in this day and age. A single HDD can be had now that has more than 8 TB of storage on it for very little money.

SSDs are all great, but for cost-effective high density, spinning disk is still king.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom