How much storage do you have on your PC?

[Zed Clampet]

I've almost completely moved to using a gaming laptop because I like gaming while sitting in my recliner at night while everyone is gathered in the living room. So my laptop came with 2 TB of storage, but only .5 of that was SSD, so I bought a 1 TB SSD external drive. I liked it so much, that I bought a second one that had 2 TB, so now I have a total of 5 TB of storage.

I'm an odd type gamer that instead of playing one game for 20 hours in a week will sometimes play 20 games one hour a piece, so the extra storage is pretty helpful.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I started with a Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD. Then I added a couple WD Black 1TB HDDs one at a time. Realizing I was running out of room, I bought a WD Black 6TB HDD. At one point I bought a Plextor 250 GB M5 Pro SSD for the OS, programs, and a game or two that requires a faster drive. When games started getting gargantuan file size, I realized "I'm gonna need a bigger drive" (cue the Jaws flashback). Just when NVMe drives seemed to start getting sane in prices, I bought a Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB for $116. Now all I look for is good deals on 2TB NVMe drives. Lately I'm looking at the Corsair MP600 2TB.

I still have a lot of games on my 1TB HDDs, I use the 6TB one mostly to store uninstalled games and for video capture. I also still sometimes install new games on one of the WD Black 1TB drives after clearing some space, like the remastered Mass Effect Legendary trilogy, which is near 80 GB. I'm REALLY getting tired of having to clear space on my 970 EVO when I need to install a new game, and often times lately, the ones I uninstall I haven't even finished yet. Then again, there ae a lot of games these days that aren't nearly as good as I thought they'd be. You have to learn to quell that itch to play new games in times like these unless you have endless storage.

I have to say though, that 6TB HDD is way faster than I thought it would be. NVMe drives are insanely fast, but what I hate about them is they suck up too many SATA ports at full speed. I will have to pull out my Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD or the Plextor 250 GB M5 Pro just to have a SATA port open for the 2TB NVMe drive, and even then, I'll have to run it at x2 speed instead of x4, so I won't get the full speed. This is the way I set up my 970 EVO, the read speed doesn't suffer much, but it took the write speed down to about 2500 Mb/s, still way more speed than games need though. Who would of thought storage drives would become one of the most talked about components!

All these drives fit inside my case btw. I have a rather large one, it's an Antec DF-85. It also came with built-in hardware to do drive hotswaps in 4 bays, but I haven't needed to use them yet. The next MB I get will have more SATA ports, I hope.

 

[Alm]

I have a 256GB & 2x 1TB SSDs (internal) and a 6TB external HDD.

There isn't much on the HDD though, it's mainly to keep files while the SSDs are for games / OS.

 

[Colif]

1 tb 970 Evo Plus NVME
3tb WD Green hdd
total 3557 (formatting steals so much)
Free 3221gb

I don't use my space and all the games I play are small.

 

[Zloth]

4TB big HDD, which I moved from my previous PC for bulk storage and installing older games that aren't going to care about drive speed.
2TB NVMe C drive.

I've still got my old PC's 1TB SSD in my old PC that isn't getting used. I should yank it and stick it in my new PC, but I'm not even close to hurting for space.

As an aside, what's the largest game you've got installed right now? Mine looks to be Red Dead Redemption 2, at 119GB.

 

[Zed Clampet]

As an aside, what's the largest game you've got installed right now? Mine looks to be Red Dead Redemption 2, at 119GB.

Ark: Survival Evolved at 302GB, but I'm getting ready to uninstall it. This is with all the DLC maps, but it's still ridiculous.

 

[Zloth]

WOW! That's huuuuge! Though I won't be surprised if somebody's Skyrim install has more.

 

[Brian Boru]

Main
256GB SSD—for OS & programs only, small size makes the monthly disk image under 30 minutes, and easy to clone if I need to transfer to another PC.
1TB SSD—for games, where my replays are permanently installed. Others I install to play, then uninstall.
4TB HDD—for files. I use my PC for work & play, so I have a lot of documents built up over the years—but only half full.
4TB External USB—to backup the HDD and keep some archives of old stuff, plus a few 256 SSD images.
Server—I have a server share for our biz, and occasionally upload a backup of our most important documents there—painful with upload speeds. I also have a bunch of TBs on OneNote—part of MS 365—which I've used very little, but probably will/should.

Others
I also have an external floppy to recover some very old family media, and a 'toaster' for simple quick examination of various old drives and transfer of their contents if necessary. Then there's the 64GB USB plugged into our router, which serves as our network drive for swapping work files and keeping the 'official' versions of those we both work on. A few other USB flash drives for whatever.

This is a good setup for me, which I will likely repeat in my next build in a couple of years. Small C: drive is easy to manage properly, and contains only the essentials for my daily use. Games are an easy reinstall, OS & programs not so.

HDD Note
This is fine for files which aren't in frequent use. Until SSD prices/MB become similar, save money by using HDDs for large media—video, music, images etc.

 

[Pifanjr]

I have a single 250GB SSD in my desktop. It's a real struggle, especially as Total War: Warhammer 2 has in insane update mechanic which clones the entire game on your disk to apply patches, no matter how big the patch. So it essentially takes up twice the space of the actual game.

 

[Colif]

I've still got my old PC's 1TB SSD in my old PC that isn't getting used. I should yank it and stick it in my new PC, but I'm not even close to hurting for space.

I could add another 256gb ssd and a 2tb hdd from my last PC but I don't really need it. Having a semi working PC as a spare is more useful to me. Not that its been turned on in a year now. At least I don't miss its case yet, its still in my room. (I didn't want to throw case away, its too good for that).

I don't use space as I had a run of bad hdd in the early 2k and you just stop bothering to put anything on it if you just have to get it all again. That and maybe constantly reinstalling ME was enough to stop me bothering. Now most of my data is on Onedrive and I don't need to worry about a hdd dying and having to spend a month recreating my music library from cd

 

[mainer]

C Drive: 1TB Samsung 860 Pro, which has my OS and game installs
D Drive: 1TB Samsung 860 Pro (when I initially bought this PC from Origin, I debated on doing a Raid 0 setup, but ended up using it for backups)
E Drive: 2TB Seagate FireCuda HHD
F Drive: 2TB Seagate FireCuda HHD
External: 1TB Extreme Portable SSD

E & F Drives are mainly used to store photos, screenshots, and save game backups. I may at some point add a larger drive, as my case has 5 hotswap bays that allow adding internal drives by just plopping them in. For now, the space I have is sufficient for storage.

The external SSD I mainly use to transfer large files. So far I love that little SSD, it's smaller than my cell phone and hasn't failed yet. I've had bad luck in the past with external drives, as I've had 3 die on me: 2 MyBooks and a Seagate.

 

[mjs warlord]

I have a 450gb ssd for software and games that windows wont let you put on a second drive and my second ssd that is 900gb is for games and everything that windows will let you choose where to install.

I use steam, epic , and other games clients so if i get short of space i just uninstall games i dont use very often then reinstall them when i want to go back . I always make copies of saved games files and folders so that when i re-install games i dont have to start from beginning again .. unless i want to do a full play through``.

I also use separate usb sticks to make back up copies of photos , docs , videos and music that i burn for my car.

I dont use back up software , i do a clean install of windows every 18 months or so because even the most efficient uninstalling software programs leaves bits behind you dont need or cant find.

 

[Ryzengang]

250gb Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME SSD
1tb Western Digital Black SN750 NVME SSD
1tb Teamgroup GX2 SATA SSD
1tb SK Hynix Gold S31 SATA SSD

Currently have only like 250gb free across drives. My backlog is extensive.. 🤣

 

[Colif]

I have a single 250GB SSD in my desktop. It's a real struggle, especially as Total War: Warhammer 2 has in insane update mechanic which clones the entire game on your disk to apply patches, no matter how big the patch. So it essentially takes up twice the space of the actual game.

I just realized I have a USB drive bigger than your SSD, and almost just as fast (300mb/s) - I forgot as its my music backup drive. https://www.samsung.com/au/memory-s...-bar-plus-256gb-titanium-gray-muf-256be4-apc/
Silly when USB can be bigger than ssd now.

 

[Hitobat]

I have an 850 evo 1TB ssd about half full, which I use as my system drive and also for Steam games.
And a 2TB western digital spinny disk, again about half full. That one is only for pictures + movies.

 

[flashn00b]

953 GB ADATA Falcon
951 GB ADATA SU800
2 TB 7200RPM HDD (I should actually start using that more, especially if i plan on editing videos)

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

128 GB SSD for OS
Then 2x HDD 2TB (7200 RPM) for most of apps, games and general storage
Add to that 1TB of external HDD.

Definitely will want to increase my SSD capacity in next PC.

 

[MrShadow]

i have a laptop rather than PC (which does make a huge difference) i have a rather pityful internal western digital 256GB SSD for windows 10,FORZA horizon 4, acid studio 11 and a couple of other bits.

sorry i dont know how to embed pictures -i also have this- https://emlyn-artist.com/piwigo/picture.php?/571/category/21
its a external 1TB western digital P50 gaming SSD drive,which transfers data faster than my internal one.i keep almost all my steam games on it,official PECS software (its got pictures i communicate with on it that can be printed off,laminated and i can then use),a lot of my DSLR photography-some of it in RAW which are huge files, and i run a arachni server off it i use it to scan my website for vunerabilitiees.

when i had a half arsed gaming/linux dual boot setup PC,i had made into a RAID setup-i had three or four internal hard drives,no SSD though-there were none back then,bog standard only unfortunately.

some people i see on steam have hundreds of games installed and i always wonder how the hell are they managing it,unless theyre small less complex games.

 

[Zloth]

Definitely will want to increase my SSD capacity in next PC.

I bet! Have you moved your User folder over to a different drive so save games don't fill the drive up?

some people i see on steam have hundreds of games installed and i always wonder how the hell are they managing it,unless theyre small less complex games.

Not sure how you can see whether somebody has a game installed or not? You can see if they own it (mostly - it's possible to hide a game).

 

[MrShadow]

I bet! Have you moved your User folder over to a different drive so save games don't fill the drive up?


Not sure how you can see whether somebody has a game installed or not? You can see if they own it (mostly - it's possible to hide a game).

thats a good point, ive always assumed it means installed.😆 my steam profile says ive got 35 games, i most definately do not have installed 35 games come to think of it,my C drive coudnt take it.

 

[Sarafan]

I don't store a lot, so I only have three SSDs. These include two SATA drives: 128 GB (Samsung 830) and 250 GB (Samsung 860 EVO) and one NVMe drive that has a capacity of 500 GB (Samsung 980). Don't need more as I still have plenty of free space available. The 128 GB drive is 9 years old and it's still in a perfect condition!

 

[mikeisekim]

2TB HDD and some external hard drives that are nooot good for booting games from. The SSD life eludes me!

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

I bet! Have you moved your User folder over to a different drive so save games don't fill the drive up?

Didn't need to do anything about it, luckily. I do some manual cleaning once in a while, but it's never been an issue with save game files.

Once tho I ran out of space. After checking what is going on I discovered some glitch in Firefox caused one of the files to swell to over 25GB in size, eating all the space to the last byte. Happened only once tho.

 

[MrShadow]

2TB HDD and some external hard drives that are nooot good for booting games from. The SSD life eludes me!

have a look at one ive got- the western digital P50, its a 1TB external SSD gaming drive and transfers gaming data at a blisteringly fast speed, not only loads games extremely quickly but no crashes like you woud get with trying to run them on a toshiba basics external (ive been there and made that mistake).
ive only ever used it with steam and the xbox monthly game pass-the xbox game pass format didnt recognise my drive for most games i tried and those i did get to download woudnt run off it,however steam seems to be made for it-in how it seemlessly boots and runs with no issues.
if its to expensive right now-just save up a bit every week for it,its well worth it if you use a lot of space up with storage hogging items,i had only afforded it and my entry level gaming laptop from years of saving after being in a huge care debt.

 

[Pr0udCh0sen1]

66 tb, 3 16tb externals. 2 8 tb externals 2tb internal. I own over ten thousand games on Steam, every game installed. That's how I roll...