I recently built a mini gaming rig and put a 90GB ssd in it for the boot drive. I almost immediately ran out of space when I started installing games, as there was only 30GB free after windows. How much space does the typical game take up? Far Cry 4 is 32GB. My case supports 2 2.5" HDDs and I want to set them up in RAID 0 for my game saves, what size hard drives should I buy, 1TB?
1-2tb depending on how many games you have or are planning to buy. I use a 2tb for my storage.
Don't use onboard raid if you want data to last. Just buy a 1TB drive or two 1TB drives.
EDIT:
Forgot to add this:
Just make the two drive a dynamic drive.
Ok thanks!
the sky is the limit really it really depends on what your uses are i'd say a good fast 1-2 TB drive or if you wanna spend alot more you could get a 4tb drive then the all your eggs in one baskets scenario raises it's head.
i got 2x tb, 2x ssds and a slow 1 tb drive
1 SSD for my OS and the other for misc programs and a few sample libraries
the 2TB hdds are basically my steam/game library and storage for music creation.
and the 1 TB is movies and music storage.
I have what I would consider a fairly large library of games and I've found that at worst I'll only be using up around 500Gbs of space normally I don't load all my games at once (what is the point when you can download them whenever) Most of my builds only have 240gb SSDs in them and my workstation has some normal HDDs to store all the crap. 1TB in SSDs is alot of money to pay and Raid 0 isn't really a safe way to store data, nor will it make any dramatic difference in gaming. You would be throwing money away to shorten loading screens. 480Gb SSDs are fairly cheap and could work well as an addition to your boot drive. In short, a 90GB SSD won't cut it as anything but a boot drive but, a 240, or a 480 are likely more then you would use on a pure gaming rig. If you are concerned see if your case supports a 3 1/2" HDD and get a 2TB WD Black or something your load times might be a little longer but you would save literately 100s of dollars. Also keep in mind most Laptop HDDs are slower then the 3 1/2" versions but will fit in the same space as a SSD so you could also do that if the 3 1/2" bay is not available.
Depends on the game. Some games, like Far Cry 4 can take up 32gb. Other games, like Defcon take up 60mb. So it really depends. Right now, my Steam directory is about 225gb with around 50 games installed. A lot are indie games in the 100-500mb range, but there are also a number of games installed like Skyrim, Fallout, Mass Effect, The Witcher etc. which run 8-20gb a piece. So like I said, it depends on the game.
It also depends on how many games you want installed at the same time. If you keep it to 1 or 2 at a time, you can keep the space required to a minimum... Though, with a 90gb SSD, you're going to be hard pressed to find the space for much. Though, you should be able to cut that 60gb install down to 30gb or so by migrating your user folder, windows temp folder etc over to a HDD. Keep in mind that SSDs run best when they have a good amount of free space. I like to keep mine below 50%, just to be sure.
As far as what size HDD to get, anything over 500gb should probably be fine game wise. Depends what else you want to store on it. Like I said, I have 50 games installed and it's taking up about 225gb on my 3tb storage hdd. Just keep in mind, you don't have to have ALL your games installed at once. Just install what you are planning on playing in the near future. I have games I haven't played in months eating up space.
I have a 1tb drive I use for games, and it works fine. I just uninstall games I have finished to make room, however I can still have most of my library installed at once. Probably will never need more for games.
On the other hand, my friend, who really likes to mod Skyrim and other crazy stuff has over 5tb of game-related stuff. I really dont know how he does it but he is always complaining about filling up his harddrives. But then again, he's the laziest person I know and wont uninstall anything (cause it takes to much effort, i guess). He probably has 500gb that has been lost to far, far away places that no one dares visit.