I'm planning a system for coding, gaming, video editing, and media storage. The price is roughly the same for one 4TB SSD versus two 2TB SSDs, so I'm trying to decide which setup makes more sense. Would separating the operating system, applications, games, and personal files across two drives improve performance or reliability? If one drive fails, would two smaller drives reduce the amount of data I lose? Alternatively, should I use one 4TB NVMe drive and add a SATA SSD or hard drive for backups? My motherboard is an ASUS X870E-E, and I'm not completely sure how its M.2 slots share bandwidth with the graphics card.
4 Answers
Two drives don’t count as a backup. They can reduce the amount of data affected if only one drive fails, but either drive can still die unexpectedly. Back up anything important to a separate device—an HDD is usually cheaper for large backups—and consider an external or cloud copy for files you absolutely cannot replace.
If the price and performance are similar, one larger SSD is a sensible choice. It leaves another M.2 slot available for a future upgrade, and modern NVMe drives are already fast enough that a second drive usually isn’t needed just to improve multitasking.
Two drives can be convenient: you could keep the operating system and applications on one, then use the other for games and projects. It also makes moving your data to a new computer easier. That said, separating drives usually won’t make a noticeable difference for normal gaming or general use.
For your motherboard, adding another NVMe drive should generally be fine with one graphics card installed, although the exact M.2 slot layout and PCIe-sharing rules are worth checking in the manual. A single 4TB NVMe drive is likely the simplest option; use a separate SATA drive, hard drive, NAS, or cloud storage for backups rather than relying on drive separation for protection.
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