I'm saving for a Ryzen 5 5500 to improve the bottleneck between my Ryzen 3 3200G and RX 5500 XT, but I also need more reliable storage. My current 500GB Western Digital WD5000AAKX hard drive is showing "At Risk" in CrystalDiskInfo, and I've already had problems with it. It runs at 7200 RPM over SATA III with a 16MB cache, but I'd like something faster and more dependable. I mainly play Mortal Kombat 11, Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Minecraft, and Overwatch. MK11 and Minecraft run fine, while CS2 takes a long time to launch. Should I buy another hard drive, or save for an SSD?
3 Answers
A practical setup is a 500GB SSD for the operating system and frequently played games, then adding a 2TB or 4TB HDD later for movies, documents, backups, and less demanding games. Older games usually run fine from a hard drive, but newer titles benefit noticeably from an SSD.
Get an SSD if you can. Even an inexpensive SATA SSD feels dramatically faster than a mechanical hard drive for Windows, game launches, loading screens, and general use. A 500GB model would be a good starting point, especially if you can keep larger files elsewhere.
Your existing drive is already a 7200 RPM SATA III model, so replacing it with another ordinary hard drive probably won't provide a major speed improvement. Since CrystalDiskInfo reports it as being at risk, back up anything important immediately and replace it rather than continuing to rely on it.
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