I'm saving for a Ryzen 5 5500 to reduce the bottleneck between my Ryzen 3 3200G and Radeon RX 5500 XT, but I also need more reliable storage. My current 500GB Western Digital WD5000AAKX hard drive is rated "At Risk" in CrystalDiskInfo, and I've already had problems with it. It's a 7200 RPM SATA III drive, but I'd like something faster and more stable. I mainly play Mortal Kombat 11, Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Minecraft, and Overwatch. Should I buy another hard drive for extra capacity, or save for an SSD?
3 Answers
You can keep using a hard drive for bulk storage, but I wouldn’t trust the current one as your only drive because of the health warning. Put your important files somewhere else first, then use a 500GB or 1TB SSD for the system and games. Games like CS2 will generally launch and load much more quickly from it, although an SSD won’t fix CPU or GPU bottlenecks.
A SATA SSD would feel dramatically faster than your current hard drive, especially when starting Windows and loading games. Even a basic 500GB model should be a major improvement, and SATA SSD prices are usually reasonable at that capacity. Since your current drive is showing an “At Risk” warning, back up anything important before it gets worse.
The practical setup is a smaller SSD for the operating system and frequently played games, plus a larger HDD later for movies, music, documents, and less demanding games. Your existing 7200 RPM drive isn’t unusually slow for a hard drive, so replacing it with another HDD won’t provide a huge speed boost. An SSD is the better upgrade for loading times.
Related Questions
Lenovo Thinkpad Stuck In Update Loop Install FilterDriverU2_Reload