6 Storage

The most important aspects of system storage are the type and quantity.

Type

Storage comes in two types, SSDs or solid state storage and HDDs or hard disk drives. Storage is measured in gigabytes, and the more storage you have the more you can store on your machine. SSDs are much faster, more reliable and generally easier to work with than traditional hard drives. However, SSDs are much more expensive on a dollar per gigabyte basis. A four terabyte HDD (that’s 4,000GBs) can be purchased for around $75, while a mere 512GB SSD can cost in excess of $100! Now we must draw a distinction between a system’s boot drive and general storage drives. The boot drive is where the operating system and almost everything the user interacts with is stored. In 2021, there is no excuse to use a HDD as the boot drive! Using an SSD here will grant you exponentially faster performance. If you need more space than is offered by your boot drive, then it’s time to start looking at HDDs. These can be added to a system later, and grant much more storage. It is in the storage drives big files like games and movies are stored, and only used when actively engaging with them.

Quantity

The other important consideration is quantity. For the system boot drive, I recommend 512GBs. While it is very possible to use less (much less in some cases), upgrading the boot drive once the computer is assembled isn’t an easy process. Because of this, I recommend just buying a boot drive (remeber, that means SSD!) that you are confident you won’t fill for a long time. For other storage drives, the only limit is how much data you have to store. Games and movies take up a significant amount of space, and a big Steam library or tons of movies can eat up storage fast. If you tend to hoard digital files, or prefer to have access to content offline, bigger storage drives are a must.

Budget Considerations

Again, in 2021, there is no excuse to use a HDD as the boot drive. Performance will be appalling compared to an SSD, and it’s too easy to add more HDDs later to justify wanting more storage for the operating system. Around $75-100 is a good ballpark figure for a system boot drive, while costs for storage drives depends entirely on how much data you have to store. If you want peace of mind for a long time, a 512GB SSD paired with a 4TB HDD should be plenty for most people. If on a tight budget, just buy a good SSD and forget about the HDD! Adding more storage is one of the easiest upgrades than can be performed on a PC, so don’t worry too much about getting all your storage when you first build the PC>.