I'm curious about whether putting a hard drive (HDD) in my PC affects its performance. Here are my specs: R5 8500G, RTX 3070, 16GB DDR5 Vengeance 5200MTs, 1TB MSI Spatium M371 SSD, and a WD 500GB HDD. Also, does my setup suck?
5 Answers
Having an HDD won’t slow your PC down by itself, but any data you access from it will be slower compared to an SSD. So if you're pulling files from the HDD, expect a lag compared to using the SSD.
In general, HDDs work well for bulk storage, but for anything you need to access frequently—like games—stick to SSDs. I haven’t used HDDs for regular access in years; all my current drives are SSDs due to their speed.
Your HDD won’t make the entire PC slower, but accessing Windows File Explorer might take a bit longer since it can freeze while waiting for the HDD to spin up. So it can seem slow, especially if you have it loaded with extra startup programs that run from there.
As long as your operating system is installed on the SSD, you should be fine! Just be mindful that if you play games requiring high FPS, it's best to have them on the SSD as well. Anything else can go on the HDD without much issue.
If your PC is starting up slowly after adding the HDD, it might be due to some background services or sync processes linked to it. If you're loading game levels, they will generally run fine after the initial load, but switching areas might feel slower due to the HDD access time.
Yeah, I noticed some games need SSDs now; seems like the way to go!