Help me decide based on your experience!

Hardware Hub Storage
1

Hey there everyone, I'm currently looking into upgrading my SSD, and decided to splurge a little so I won't have to later down the road. I currently have a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO as my main drive, accompanied by a 2TB WD Caviar Black, and a 2TB Seagate Barracuda.

As you can see, I don't discriminate when it comes to my storage. To give you a little background on why I want to upgrade, I originally used a A-Data 128GB SSD for my OS, but that thing got full so fast, so I bought the 250GB 840 EVO, and now I have the same issue again. It has 10GB of space left, I have no idea why and I don't know if there is a way I can clear up space on it.

So here I am, I would buy another 840 and raid them, but I can't find any around used, and all the new ones cost more than the 850 EVO, which is ridiculous. At this point I'm hesitant at spending so much on storage, but I don't want to move up to 500GB and have the same thing happen a few months from now.

Let's move on to why I even made this post. I have looked up different SSDs with different price points, keep in mind that I live in Canada, so if any of these prices seem outrageous, then you know why. I also have not used any products from any of these companies, besides A-Data and Samsung. I'm going to list the SSDs from lowest to highest price.

A-Data Premier SP550 480GB - $169.99 / x2 = $395.61 (After Taxes)
Kingston SSDNow V300 480GB - $179.99 / x2 = $412.88 (After Taxes)
Crucial MX200 500GB - $185.97 / x2 = $426.60 (After Taxes)
Crucial BX200 480GB - $189.99 / x2 = $429.38 (After Taxes) Something weird is happening with this, the NCIX website is being strange, it should not be cheaper than the Sandisk, but apparently it is.
Sandisk Ultra II 480GB - $188.98 / x2 = $433.50 (After Taxes)
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB - $198.98 / x2 = $456.44 (After Taxes)

Any help will be appreciated. If you've ever used any of these products, don't be afraid to leave your feedback with your past experience. Thank you!

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This probabaly won't help at all but seeing as your os drive only needs to have the os and higher end programs installed on it , why not install all your programs that don't benefit from an SSD onto your hdd instead?

3

I actually did that, I moved all my Adobe products, Steam, Origin, GoG and uplay to my HDDs, and somehow this thing managed to fill up.

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I'd say that it would be a good idea to look at what's taking up all the storage space if you don't know what it is. I don't know what you use your pc for but i don't think 250GB get used up just like that usually. Maybe it's going to be a problem again later.
Sorry for not bringing any help with SSDs, I don't really have much knowledge about that.

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I too am running a 256gb Samsun 850 pro. Only the boot/is drive. And about 30gb used. Something is up with the storage on your system.

Though I move are user folders to the HDD so if I need to reinstall I only.lose the os and nothing else.

Edit: there is a program that shows you visually how much each thing on your storage is taking up. I forget the name but someone will.fill in the blank. Kepp track of where things auto download to, usually C: that can take up a lot of space. Where does steam auto install games to? You can change it to auto I stall and download to other drives to kepp games off the SSD if they are taking up space.

Like I said above I move all the user folders off the C: onto one of my other drives keeping the SSD only containing the OS and programs.

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The storage visualization program is simply titled visdir. I agree with everyone else on this topic, find out what's eating up your storage.

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So I managed to find a few things to delete, such as temporary files and a "windows.old" folder, cleared up 37GB of space. Now I'm at 45.5GB free. I think I can manage with this, and if I get a new SSD, I think ill stick to a single 500GB SSD for now. Thanks for the help!

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8

Windows.old is from performing an in-place upgrade instead of a clean install of Windows. I'd recommend clean installing if it's not much of a hassle for you.

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Also if you have not optimized windows for max performance with an ssd then please install Samsung Magician off their website.

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A way that I have cleared up a lot of SSD space is moving your
Documents
Downloads
Music
Pictures
Videos
all onto a second drive by right clicking the folder, properties, Location Tab, and Move. Windows will automatically move all the files in the containing folders to another drive. Especially documents since all of your games saves will be saved in the folder. Download's folder if you end up using it as an archive for many files.
Doing this has actually preserved many files for me through multiple installs.
Have you ran Disk Cleanup utility recently? Could help remove some things also scan for system files.
Also check your C: Drive for any drivers that are backed up by default to it. There are older version of the drivers archived in there and can build up overtime from what I have experienced.

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You are a genius! I already had my music, pictures and videos on my HDD, but I never thought of moving my Documents and Downloads... I just freed up 50GB of space. Thank you!!

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