While anything less can negatively influence your gaming experience, anything more can make you store even movies and videos. In the end, though, my recommendation for the Barracuda is the same as it is for the WD Blue drive listed above: it’s a perfect option for gamers who need a large cheap storage drive to hold their games. If you’re looking to spend over $200 for a hard drive, you have a couple of options…. If that is the case, then the size of your hard drive is going to be extremely important. 8000 to 200,000 typical Word documents (without images in them) The FireCuda does come in 1TB and 2TB versions and both come in at under $100. By choosing a less expensive 250-500GB SSD and pairing it with a larger 1TB+ hard drive, you maximize your budget for both performance and storage capacity. Now, even your smartphone probably has at least a 16GB hard drive. As for hard drive physical size, hard drives come in two main sizes--"3.5 inch", and "2.5 inch"--which are technical classifications that refer to the width of a hard drive's platter, but not the full dimensions of the hard drive unit itself. But, if you are looking for a drive in the $100-$200 price range, the WD Black 4TB is another viable option. If you plan to download movies or triple-A (AAA) games, you might want to upgrade to a hard drive with 500GB or even 1TB. Indie games such as the 2D ones that has a lower budget than other games take less space. It is also important to know the storage space required if you are upgrading the internal hard drive or are thinking to buy an external USB drive for playing intensive games. It comes in capacities of as small as 500GB and as high as 6TB and it runs at 7200 RPM. This gives you plenty of space and it’s fairly affordable. It's available in capacities ranging from as little as 250GB to 2TB to give you all the room you need to store your favorite games, programs, and files. Our pick for best external hard drive for … You can get the Black in capacities of as small as 500GB and as large as 6TB. *NOTE: If you’re looking to increase the amount of storage in your laptop, make sure you get a 2.5″ drive and not a 3.5″ drive—as they will  not fit inside of a laptop. Investing in an SSD of 1 TB capacity instead of an HDD of the same capacity means running applications and relevant software components faster and smoother. Although, having a lot of storage is important for most gamers, who typically also have large amounts of music and videos. I personally like things fast and want my favorite games there and ready to play. 5000 3-4 minute mp3 Songs. Otherwise, this HDD will give you everything you need storage-wise. How Much Storage Do You Need for Gaming? What laptops last the longest? The drive comes in at just under $40 for the 1TB version and it comes in 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB capacities as well. Best $1,000 Gaming PC Build: Max Out Any Game Easily, Best $800 Gaming PC for 2021: High-End 1080P/1440P PC Build, Best $700 Gaming PC for 2021: VR-Ready 1080P-Killing Build, The Best Micro-ATX Cases for 2021: The Top 11 mATX Cases for Gaming, The 7 Best Budget Graphics Cards for 2021. However, as this is a post on the best hard drive for gaming, the server-oriented drives didn’t really seem to fit here so I left them out. Hard-drive space usage can be found by getting information on the hard drive, or from the Disk Usage section of the Activity Monitor utility. Your hard drive isn’t going to have the hugest impact on your gaming experience. And, even if you are going to get a solid state drive (check out our recommendations for the best SSDs available right now), it’s a good idea to get a traditional hard drive to support it. These experiences are due to low disk space. While solid state drives are significantly cheaper than they have been in the past, traditional mechanical hard drives are still a great affordable storage option. Many passionately famous games such as Witcher 3 and FIFA 19 need over 50 GB. A 2.5-inch SSD, the most common type, is the same size and shape as a mechanical hard drive, allowing it to pop into the same drive bays, which is convenient for manufacturers and home upgraders. I usually recommend an HDD/SSD with 1TB of storage space. 65 typical Semi-Pro Camera RAW images. A lot of people recommend to just get a smaller SSD for the same price and then just add a mechanical hard drive later down the road to maximize your storage capacity. Most average users would be fine with 250 to 300 gigabytes (GB). 400 3000 x 2000px JPG files. If you’ve got a lot to spend on your new build (or upgrade), you might want to consider getting an SSD, and if you have a medium-range budget, getting a smaller SSD and pairing it with a large mechanical hard drive makes sense, too. Ultimately, if you’re building a budget gaming PC, I would probably recommend the typical route for storage, and that is to start with a smaller SSD and add more storage down the road. However, most people who think they know how to configure SSD and HDD for gaming, but they really don’t. Learn how your comment data is processed. While it is common to see SSD drives below 256GB available cheaply, you should avoid these drives. also offer you free space to store data. This helps improve load times in the applications that you use the most. Hey, I’m Brent. … The drives also come with a 5-year warranty, which is quite a bit longer than the standard Seagate Barracuda drives. On YouTube, I build PCs, review laptops, components, and peripherals, and hold giveaways. If you’re working with a budget, then you’ll have to consider going with a smaller HDD and upgrading to more storage later. First off, definitely don't go buying a computer with the biggest hard drive that's currently available. After all, the available storage space makes you determine the quantity of four favorite games and media that you can store simultaneously. Both the 2TB and 4TB cost between $100-$200. Let’s first comprehend the average game sizes. The first is its hardware, and the second is its functionality. Thus, this post aims to guide you on how much storage do you need for gaming to ensure a smooth experience you crave for. The first computer to have a 1GB hard drive was $25,000, after all, and that was in 1985. Frankly, the ratio of 30 games in just 1 terabyte of storage space is unfavorable. The 4TB drive comes with 128 MB of cache and operates at 7200 RPM. If you still do not resolve it, more similar issues will surface to irritate a serious gamer like you. Check out our guide on the Best External Hard Drives. Some may even reach 100 GB. The 1TB drive also has 64 MB of cache. – 512GB is a better choice , you won’t have to worry nearly as much about running out of space, nor worry as much about requiring a secondary drive and you’ll get … Interpreting this statement further, each terabyte of storage can encompass around 30 games, provided all the games you wish to store are AAA and 3D. Still, this cannot deny the fact that it is one of the most important components to consider. As such I have a 1 TB SSD as my primary drive. Need to back up your growing collection of digital photos, home videos and music? Get This HDD. Similarly, the storage’s speed will determine the pace at which a game loads. In this post, I will go over the best gaming hard drives in 2021 at various price ranges so that you have multiple options to choose between. Seagate Expansion Portable Hard Drive. You require it to store not only your games but also other multimedia files and documents. This is why gaming laptops have an SSD of 1 TB storage capacity although SSDs of 512 GB are available to serve minimum requirements of the gamers. The two factors here that determine what kind of replacement hard drive to buy are the physical size (width and height; measured in inches and millimeters) and the interface. Fantom Drives 2TB External Hard Drive. If you need these games, then a 256 GB SSD can accommodate only up to four or five such games. And, if you have a larger budget, you can either just start out with a large SSD, or combine a smaller-to-mid-size SSD and a large mechanical hard drive right from the get-go. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. When it is the matter of playing games on a computer, it is a fact that storage space or hard drives are often overlooked. However, if you need the storage capacity now and don’t want to wait to get it, you can go with an option like the FireCuda and get a bit more speed to go along with your higher capacity drive. This makes SSDs the top choice of several gamers. I only chose two hard drives for each price range and while there are definitely some other worthy HDDs in these price ranges, I felt these offered the best returns for PC gamers. A gaming mouse can change the way you play PC games forever. **NOTE: Need an external storage solution? – 256GB would be fine for the average student but not for a gamer, unless you are fine with using a hard drive as a secondary drive to store your games. You have to understand that... Two factors decide the lifespan of a laptop. Today only, over at Rakuten.com, you can buy a Seagate Expansion 4TB USB 3.0 hard drive for $139.99 shipped when you apply coupon code 5419C15 at checkout. The life span of different kinds... A basic aspect to consider at the time of buying a gaming monitor is its size! I’ve broken down the categories into four different price ranges: hard drives under $50, hard drives between $50-$100, hard drives between $100-$200, and hard drives over $200. Four terabytes. In a word, whether you really need a 1TB hard drive depends on how you manage the space and whether you use other storage methods like cloud storage. Ultimately, though, I wouldn’t recommend spending over $200 on a hard drive if you’re building a system for gaming unless you have an unlimited budget and you have already chosen a large SSD for your build. And, second, you can go with a more server-oriented drive. You can use the SSD to hold your most important games and applications, and you can use your hard drive for mass storage of files and less-used programs. Required fields are marked *. What to look for? In most cases, I would say that the Blue drive (or Seagate’s Barracuda) would be a better option than the WD Black just because of the savings. Get This HDD, Western Digital’s Black hard drives are a bit different than their Blue drives and are a bit faster, and are better-built to endure heavier usage. 5 inch drives are 146 mm long, 101.6 mm wide, and either 19 or 25.4 mm tall. According to forbes.com, around one billion people across the globe use computers for... Let’s assume that you have already obtained a powerful GPU, a stable CPU, and a large solid-state drive for 4K gaming. Filed Under: Gaming HDD, PC Hardware, Storage. for gaming will need a high capacity SSD to store games without the need to uninstall or reinstall. A typical Windows 10 installation takes around 25GB, while most games are reaching 50GB+ in installation size. The standard modern AAA game is likely to be at least 25 GB in size. First, you can just get a larger capacity version of any of the drives listed above. A2A. This multi-size enclosure converts your existing storage into an external hard drive. If you want to use SSD and HDD for gaming, you need to set them up properly on your hard drive so that everything works. What to look for in a best gaming feets for mouse? So, on an average, three such games can fit on a hard disk of 100 GB. Hey, I’m Brent. WD Blue 1TB Overview. For most desktop computers, 3.5-inch HDDs will do just fine. Below are the common drive sizes to consider for gaming according to your requirements: SSDs are replacing HDDs due to their faster loading times, as they need not spin a platter to find data. By doing it correctly, you will have a better user experience and computer performance. And, naturally, larger drives are more expensive than smaller drives, so you’ll need to pick the external hard drive that’s a good match for your gaming storage needs and your wallet. In fact, they are already integrated into the latest laptops. Ultimately, if you’re looking for a cheap storage option that will give you plenty of space to hold all of your games (has the ability to hold ~80 25GB games), then either this Western Digital Blue or the Seagate Barracuda drive below will be your best bet. Overall, the Pro version is a bit faster than the standard Barracuda and if you’re looking for a little bit more performance from your drive, it’s not a bad option for you to consider. The answer to “How much storage do I need for gaming?” is 512 GB for beginners and 1 TB or more for gaming aficionados. The drive comes with a 5-year warranty, which is right on par with the Seagate Barracuda Pro drives. I’m an avid gamer and tech enthusiast, too. 7 Laptops That Don’t Get Viruses this 2018. A full 1TB of hard drive space is enough to match the needs of any budget-oriented gamer. Obviously, SSDs are more expensive than HDDs. Though laptops will usually only work with one size, many desktop motherboards have anchor points for longer and shorter drives. Get This HDD. It also operates at 7200 RPM and comes with 256 MB of cache. For instance, the 2.5-inch drive bays used for hard drives and solid state drives can come in several sizes. The most common size is labeled M.2 Type-2280. Hit the button below to subscribe! These days, you truly need lots of hard drive space. The G-Technology These hard drives are ideal for gamers or anyone else looking for affordable storage in bulk. It will also work perfectly when paired with a mid-sized SSD to maximize speed and cost. Ultimately, you won’t go wrong with either option, and if you can get either drive on sale, that’d be the route to go. Both options come in at similar prices (both 1TB versions are ~$40), have similar capacity offerings, and offer the same amount of cache. We already went over what Western Digital’s Black drives bring to the table above on the 1TB version. If you see 2.5 or 1.0-inch options, they are for laptops and for smaller consumer electronics respectively. The SSD is used to store the data that you use the most, whether that’s from games or other programs. Well, it is time to know how much storage do I need for gaming. Even the older and last-generation AAA games need less space. Get This HDD. If the HDD has enough capacity to store your games (modern games range from 20GB up to 180GB for a single installation), and is fast enough to support the graphics, you shouldn’t have troubles.