how big is your ssd/hdd

paulm2930

paulm2930

Suspended / Banned
Messages
287
Name
paul
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi all
i will be swapping out my mac mini hdd for an ssd soon but I'm not sure if ill ever need larger than 120/256gb. Actually i may add an ssd as boot drive
and keep the hdd for less used files. what are your thoughts?
 
I'm on a PC but I can't imagine having only a 120-256gb drive ... my laptop has a 960gb SSD and 700gb HDD internally as well as several TB externals :)
 
256GB NVME m.2 boot drive
960GB ssd data storage
2 X 2 TB in Raid 1 in a backup server.
2 X external drives kept off site.
 
•


2TB is quite affordable and a good size
for photography archiving.
 
A 250 GB SSD for OS and software works fine (all my PC's currently have this). SSD's are cheap now, if I were buying now I'd go for 500 GB/1TB.

Storage I have at least a 2TB drive in each machine, plus cloud backup. Main rig has 8TB but that's not for just photos/video.
 
I use a 120GB SSD for OS and applications It still has 65GB free space for now I'm not upgrading anytime soon because I guess paying extra to buy bigger SSD to get more unused disk space woulld be crazy .

I have all my data, images, documents on a separate internal hard drives. No RAID as the computer is not required to be up and running 24hours a day all year round.
 
Last edited:
I have a 120gb ssd for OS and apps and 2tb WD black for photos and data.
 
I'm on Linux and a 120GB SSD is very nippy indeed with plenty of free space. I went that way as I wasn't totally sure how reliable the SSD would be and I have quite a few old HDD's lying around and I can transfer big space using items like Blu Rays and Raw files to them via USB.

ps - I've had the SSD for 2 years now and it has been fault free.
 
Last edited:
A good SSD will boot up quickly, which is probably the main reason to have one. If you have USB 3 or similar then an external hard drive for everything else, images etc. As a minimum I's opt for 256 Gb but f you want to future proof the a 500Gb would be a better option.
 
paulm2930 said:
but I'm not sure if ill ever need larger than 120/256gb
Click to expand...

I'd opt for the largest (within reason) you can get and what your budget will allow...I'm thinking of upgrading my wife's laptop to an SSD and am looking at 256 or 512 if I can get one for not a lot more.

What size is your current HDD and is this full / getting there ?

Look at how you're going to use it and this may help decide if you're better with an SSD internally with an extra external HDD for files ?
 
I'd go for 250gb - unless you plan to have a lot of installed software.

As an indication I'm running Windows 10 with Office, Lightroom 6,Photoshop Elements 14, the usual utilities and about 20 games / apps.
Space used 130gb from 250. I cannot see I will ever get to 250gb on this PC - now't much more to put on there!
 
andyred said:
I'd opt for the largest (within reason) you can get and what your budget will allow...I'm thinking of upgrading my wife's laptop to an SSD and am looking at 256 or 512 if I can get one for not a lot more.

What size is your current HDD and is this full / getting there ?

Look at how you're going to use it and this may help decide if you're better with an SSD internally with an extra external HDD for files ?
Click to expand...
The hdd currently in there is 1tb and I've not had it long so is nowhere near full. I want to upgrade for the speed not for speed and extra size as things stand. Mainly because I can use the existing hdd as storage and get an ssd for the OS and apps etc.
 
zendog said:
I'd go for 250gb - unless you plan to have a lot of installed software.

As an indication I'm running Windows 10 with Office, Lightroom 6,Photoshop Elements 14, the usual utilities and about 20 games / apps.
Space used 130gb from 250. I cannot see I will ever get to 250gb on this PC - now't much more to put on there!
Click to expand...
This is useful info, thanks, I can gauge what others have installed for a better judgement.
 
My non retina MacBook Pro contains a 480GB SSD, and a 1TB 7200rpm drive in a carrier in place of the optical drive. 480/500GB SSD's are very reasonably priced now.
 
paulm2930 said:
The hdd currently in there is 1tb and I've not had it long so is nowhere near full. I want to upgrade for the speed not for speed and extra size as things stand. Mainly because I can use the existing hdd as storage and get an ssd for the OS and apps etc.
Click to expand...

Well in that case, I think I'd be tempted with getting a 256GB SSD then (unless the 512 is not much more)
 
I also use an internal SSD on my iMac via USB 3, a 250GB Samsung EVO 850, which I use for booting OSX and running programmes from.. I use the 1TB internal drive for storage only.
 
I used a 128gb samsung for years with no space issues (main storage on nas/server).

Only just moved to 256gb as I kept downloading Cities: Skylines assets..
 
Last edited:
I have a 500gb SSD in my Mac Pro and 256 in my macbook pro.
 
250gb HDD for main OS
1TB for bits and pieces
2 x £TB drives for storing and backing up
 
I run with a 256GB nvme m.2 and call it done.
I have 16TB of storage available for moving data too on a NAS with a further 24TB of mirrored data and redundant drive should the worst happen and a raid needs rebuilding.

Best bang per buck is in the 4TB range at the moment on storage and on 250-500gb standard SATA6GB/s SSD drives.
 
I bought a Samsung Evo 850 (1tb) for my Late 2012 mac mini. Adobe CC takes around 8 second to go from greyed out to black now ..it was over 40 seconds before. Bouncing icons are reduced to a minimum. I bought the 1tb because i thought it'd give me room to spare. I only ever have around 100gb on my HD. Everything is on my Raid drives/Time Machine and WD drives. I did want the Sandisk as I've never had an issue with CF/SD cards. However, the shop that fitted it suggested the Samsung. They're the experts, not me, so I went with what they said.

The best £300 I've spent this year!
 
For a single boot / storage 128 / 256gb ssd should be fine :)
 
Jesus Quintana said:
I bought a Samsung Evo 850 (1tb) for my Late 2012 mac mini. Adobe CC takes around 8 second to go from greyed out to black now ..it was over 40 seconds before. Bouncing icons are reduced to a minimum. I bought the 1tb because i thought it'd give me room to spare. I only ever have around 100gb on my HD. Everything is on my Raid drives/Time Machine and WD drives. I did want the Sandisk as I've never had an issue with CF/SD cards. However, the shop that fitted it suggested the Samsung. They're the experts, not me, so I went with what they said.

The best £300 I've spent this year!
Click to expand...

Sandisk ssd are medicocre to be fair, there are certainly better drives. The Samsung being one.
 
I've got 3 sandisk ultra ii ssd's and they are great. Never had an issue. I've got a Samsung 840 ssd, same again, great.
 
neil_g said:
Sandisk ssd are medicocre to be fair, there are certainly better drives. The Samsung being one.
Click to expand...
mediocre how? if I'm a hobbyist photographer and don't have hundreds of programs/apps will i notice any difference?
 
Last edited:
Jesus Quintana said:
I bought a Samsung Evo 850 (1tb) for my Late 2012 mac mini. Adobe CC takes around 8 second to go from greyed out to black now ..it was over 40 seconds before. Bouncing icons are reduced to a minimum. I bought the 1tb because i thought it'd give me room to spare. I only ever have around 100gb on my HD. Everything is on my Raid drives/Time Machine and WD drives. I did want the Sandisk as I've never had an issue with CF/SD cards. However, the shop that fitted it suggested the Samsung. They're the experts, not me, so I went with what they said.

The best £300 I've spent this year!
Click to expand...
can you explain raid/time machine/wd drives?
 
i'm new to the mac mini so can anyone help with how to copy my existing data from a hd to an ssd and also what is involved with using the original hd in the second bay in the mini?
 
neil_g said:
I used a 128gb samsung for years with no space issues (main storage on nas/server).

Only just moved to 256gb as I kept downloading Cities: Skylines assets..
Click to expand...

Was this an Evo or a Pro Neil? I am thinking about swopping out a 5400rpm hdd from my Dell laptop for an SSD hence the interest and question.

Regards: Anthony.
 
Anthony.Ralph said:
Was this an Evo or a Pro Neil? I am thinking about swopping out a 5400rpm hdd from my Dell laptop for an SSD hence the interest and question.

Regards: Anthony.
Click to expand...

Having read the reviews, I decided on the Evo and have just ordered one from Amazon.

Anthony.
 
256GB for main drive and various backup drives.

I think i will be getting more SSD backup drives though. I still think several smaller ones is better that a few large ones. Do you guys agree?
 
paulm2930 said:
can you explain raid/time machine/wd drives?
Click to expand...
Sorry for the late reply, I never seem to get emails to say I have a reply.

I like my Mac tidy so I have photos on one disk (two really - raid), my iTunes on another and so on. Anyway, I have the following:
I x internal Samsung Evo 850 SSD. It's basically a boot up disk with minimal stuff stored on it.

I have the 3 (or 4) tb Time Machine.I think there is an option to back up extra drives which I *may* have selected. I tend to keep my documents on here.

I have 2 x Seagate 5tb drives running as a RAID 1. All my photos are on these two drives. I did have a script running to make a RAID set up as El Capitan removed this option. However, after dropping one of my drives and subsequently it dying, in was a PITA trying to set up RAID on a new drive. I then bought Softraid for £36 and haven't looked back. It tells you if a drive is likely to fail (it told me my internal HD was on its way out which sped up the process of me switching to an SSD.

I also have a portable HD (1tb) with my itunes library (132gb) on it.


Before anyone lectures me and tells me RAID 1 isn't a back up, I know! However, when I did drop a HD, I still had a "back up" so in my eyes at least, I sort of do!!!!
 
Just bought and installed a samsung 850 evo 250gb ssd. i have the original 1tb hd in an enclosure for storage too. can't seem to get my windows pc to recognise the old hd to transfer my files tho. any ideas?
 
paulm2930 said:
Just bought and installed a samsung 850 evo 250gb ssd. i have the original 1tb hd in an enclosure for storage too. can't seem to get my windows pc to recognise the old hd to transfer my files tho. any ideas?
Click to expand...

I have just today (well yesterday, as it is past midnight here) swopped out my old hdd for a Samsung Evo ssd like you. It came with migration software on a CD did yours? After migrating the old C;\ drive contents onto the ssd (popped into an enclosure temporarily) I installed the ssd and put the old hdd in the enclosure and like you Windows couldn't see the hdd. Going into disk management, I found the hdd was offline and once I had clicked on the drive to bring it onto line, all was well.

Does that help?

Anthony.
 
How much space for drives have you? I'd certainly run an ssd for the operating system, after that it depends what you use it for. My PC is built for Photoshop and Lightroom, so I have a Samsung Evo 950 m2 ssd for OS and applications, a Evo 850 ssd for Lightroom cache and catalogue, and another for this years raw files. All 500gb.
Then I have 4 x 4tb WD black drives raid 5 for data, jpgs etc.

All backed up to a Hp mini server with a ssd for OS (it runs windows server so I can run the cctv app on it) and 4x 6TB WD red drives


Boot time is 3 secs after the bios logo finishes, Lightroom is rapid, no waiting for thumbnails to load and I have over 130k images in my catalogue.
 
Last edited:
If you have much space for drives, I'd stick in a good size ssd and use usb3 drives externally for other data.
 
Anthony.Ralph said:
I have just today (well yesterday, as it is past midnight here) swopped out my old hdd for a Samsung Evo ssd like you. It came with migration software on a CD did yours? After migrating the old C;\ drive contents onto the ssd (popped into an enclosure temporarily) I installed the ssd and put the old hdd in the enclosure and like you Windows couldn't see the hdd. Going into disk management, I found the hdd was offline and once I had clicked on the drive to bring it onto line, all was well.

Does that help?

Anthony.
Click to expand...
hi Anthony, yes mine did come with the cd but my mac would not recognise it, so i used carbon copy cloner instead. just had a look and i don't seem to have the option for turning the hd online. how is this done?
paul
 
Not sure on a Mac, as I have a Win10 pc. Perhaps someone with the necessary knowledge can chip in?

Anthony
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top