Pc Storage Guide: M.2 Nvme vs Sata Ssd vs Hdd

HDD (Hard Disk Drive) is currently the most popular PC Storage Device.

Its biggest advantage is the low price for the large volume. The biggest disadvantage is that basically in all other aspects except the price HDDs are significantly worse then Flash Memory Devices (SSD).

Few years ago HDD drives were the only good option even in High End Gaming PCs, today we are trying to get rid of them in favor of fast SSD drives.

HDD drives are mounted inside the PC case.

HDDs with spin speed lower than 7200 RPM are outdated.

SSD (Solid-State Drive) with SATA III interface is currently a kind of standard on the market especially in the case of Gaming PC.

SATA SSDs are significantly better than HDDs. They have faster Access Time, faster Read and Write Speeds, as well as better durability. They have no problems with fragmentation and degradation.

The disadvantage is their high price in relation to the amount of available volume.

Another problem is the same as in HDD disks, the SATA III interface which limits the maximum read and write speed.

Drives of this type are mounted inside the PC case. Due to their small form factor 2.5-inch, mounting bracket for 3.5-inch drive bay is required.

SSHD (solid state hybrid drive) is storage device that combines a faster storage medium SSD with a higher-capacity HDD.

In simple terms two drives in one.

Speed is higher than HDD, but not as high as SSD. The price is lower than SSD but not as low as HDD.

It is just a standard HDD drive with an added Flash Memory buffer that is supposed to speed up the operation of this HDD.

Marketing slogans advertise SSHDs as drives combining the large cheap volume of HDDs with the speed of SSDs.

In practice, unfortunately, the effect is not satisfactory, especially when it comes to PC gaming. While with a normal desktop computer, you can see a significant increase in the speed of loading the system and the application, for games, speed improvement is not satisfactory.

It is still a normal HDD which has its great moments when the data is read from the SSD module.

SATA M.2 SSD (Solid-State Drive) drives are the same as SATA SSD, except that they have a different form factor and connection method.

These are still SATA drives, they are only very slightly faster than standard 2.5-inch SSD drives.

I will write it again because it is important: SATA M.2 SSD drives are only very slightly faster than SATA 2.5-inch, SATA M.2 is NOT fast NVMe M.2.

This is the most common mistake made by people buying drives, who buy M.2 SATA as a faster alternative to their old SSD.

All the pros of SATA SSD remain. Unfortunately, the same cons also remain: high price.

M.2 disks are mounted in a special socket located on the motherboard or on PCIe adapter card.

NVMe is short for Non-Volatile Memory Express. NVMe drives are currently the best and fastest SSD drives used in PC Gaming.

Although visually (form factor) M.2 NVMe and M.2 SATA disks are very similar (easy to confuse), they functionally differ fundamentally. M.2 NVMe in PCIe Gen3 standard achieves transfer speed up to 3900 MB/s while M.2 SATA is still only 600 MB/s.

NVMe drives combine all the advantages of the best possible drives for Gaming PC, the only problem is the high price for large volume.

The current standard is PCIe Gen3, PCIe Gen4 is already under preparation, even faster and more efficient. While the first PCIe Gen4 motherboards have already appeared on sale, we will have to wait a while for efficient PCIe Gen4 drives.

Mounted in a special socket located on the motherboard or on PCIe adapter card.

Intel Optane Memory is not really an independent drive, it is an additional memory module significantly accelerating other drives in the system, especially HDD drives.

Optane is very fast, but it is also expensive and has low capacity, in addition, it requires a modern Intel processor mounted on the board.

It is a newer and better solution similar to Hybrid HDD (SSHD). It's perfect technology for users who already have large HDDs and who want to significantly increase the responsiveness of existing drives.

Marketing theory about accelerating something other than HDD with Intel Optane Memory, e.g. SSD drives, does not appeal to me at all.

The fast NVMe M.2 drive will always be a better solution than Intel Optane + HDD.

Intel Optane is available in M.2 form factor or as PCIe Card.

Optical Drives are used as additional drives in the Gaming PC, mainly for reading install version of games.

In principle, you can say that in a modern PC you will not need an optical drive, with one exception, the installation of old boxed version of games.

So if you have a sentiment for old CDs, you have a collection of old games or you like to buy games in boxes instead of downloading them from Internet, you will need to install an optical drive.

This is not a problem, optical drives are currently very cheap and easily available. Most of them got SATA interface, and are connected in the same way as SATA HDDs inside PC case. There are also external USB drives.

To read the discs you will need a BD-ROM (Blu-ray) reader that reads all previous versions of discs like CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs and BDs (all that was used to distribute games).

If you also want to record your own discs you will need a recorder, e.g. BD-R recorder.

Cloud Storage consists of storing information on an external computer (server) maintained by a hosting company. This method of data storage is becoming more and more popular as the speed and availability of Internet increases.

The main advantage of Cloud Storage is easy access to data on all your devices regardless of their physical location. Unfortunately, the biggest disadvantage is the cost of the service.

In the context of Gaming PC, Cloud Storage can be treated as additional storage and does not have much use directly in playing games, unless we recognize Steam, Origin, Epic Store or other online services with games as Cloud Storages.

Cloud Storage, on the other hand, can successfully replace traditional data storage like CD-ROMs, HDDs, Flash Drives and others for storage data and backups.

There is a large selection of Cloud Storage services on the market, most of them have free stripped versions that are often sufficient for normal use.

Whether we like it or not Cloud storage is the future trend, and over time, it probably will replace other types of storage media.

USB Flash Drive is Flash Memory Device with integrated USB interface. It performance depends equally on quality of the included Flash Memory and USB port.

The latest and fastest working standard is USB 3.2, all above 3.0 is OK, most popular is USB 3.1

In fact USB 3.2 includes USB 3.0 and USB 3.1, USB 4.0 is future version with USB-C connector.

So when buying a Flash Drive, make sure it is at last USB 3.0.

It will be compatible with the most popular older USB 2.0 so you will not have problems to connect it to any older hardware, just take Type-A plug shape, it's most popular.

On the other hand, your motherboard should also have at least USB 3.0 ports (or 3.1)

There is no direct use of USB Flash Drive when it comes to Gaming PC, but if you don't want to depend entirely on Cloud Storage it is the easiest way to transfer and store your data with low cost.

To increase the level of security, the data placed on the USB Flash Drive can be encoded so that only you have access to them.

The External Drive consists of a USB interface and a drive connected through it.

Almost all types of storage can be connected via USB.

So you can have an external HDD with high capacity for a low price, fast SSD for smaller amounts of data but with faster access, DVD or CD-ROM for when you need to install something.

USB External Drive allows you to connect the device you need at the moment, without having to disassemble the computer.

It should be remembered, however, that the drive connected via USB always works slightly slower than connected directly to the interface on the motherboard. Recommended USB version is at least 3.0 and preferably 3.1.