im in need of more priamary ssd space for Star Citizen, DCS, IL2, & Arma, perhaps escape from tarkov. That ends up being a fairly healthy chunk of memory, ideally I would need a 1tb drive for that plus an operating system. Currently my laptop has the factory twin 120gb msata drives in a Raid 0 array partitioned into two drives for the OS and primary programs and then I use a 3tb WD Black drive in the dock that also contains the desktop graphics card. Unfortunately due to work I need something fairly portable to use, this has been outstanding for me so far. While I have the first gen of the MSI GS30 with the i7-4870HQ rather than the second generation i7-5700HQ, I prefer it since it out performs the newer chip and my particular one has only lost one top benchmark score for the processor on 3dmark since my 1080ti upgrade. I’m might have to over clock it some day and take that score back but why bother for daily use when I know I already won the silicon lottery with it. All that said, I can go a number of routes 1 x 1tb Samsung 850 $240 (leave one of the 120gb as extra high speed storage or as the os drive) 2 x 500gb Samsung 850 $340 but allows for a raid 0 array again 2 x 1tb Samsung 850 $480 (gives 2tb in raid 0) Or Leave the pair of 120gb drives in raid 0 and move my 3tb WD black drive into an external usb3.0 housing and install a 1tb ssd in the dock for about $270 but then it would have to share the single PCIe 3.0 x16 lane with my gtx1080ti that interfaces with the dock. Is it worth giving up on the speed of the raid 0 array in the cheapest option to gain the 1tb of msata ssd storage directly connected to the mother board while allowing for upgrading to raid 0 down the road? Or spend the extra 100 for the slightly less storage space but with the performance of it being in a raid 0 array?
or say screw it all, sell your kidney and (if it is available) get the 15 terabyte samsung solid state. Haven't seen if seagates 60 TB SSD is out yet. That might be enough space.
does your notebook support internal PCIe based SSD's? I know a few do right now but not very many. if so I would say screw the sata based stuff since it is meehh on the top speed of things. a PCIe SSD can be 4 to 6 times faster then SATA. The average top quality SSD get around 450 t0 550mbps with SATA, the PCIe are getting around 2500 to 3500mbps read speeds with writing being around 1/3 of those. just something to think about if its possible. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K54C9645 also, never liked raid 0 because of the chance of just loosing everything. another thing to add. a few companies are starting to sell bare bones laptops. basically laptop minus cpu, ram, harddrive, os, and some with or without GPU. Could be a optional upgrade to try and get PCIe SSD's instead of SATA. Since the case and motherboard have to support it.
The risk of raid 0 always kept me from using it until it came from the factory on this laptop, I know it’s faster but I’m really not sure how much or if it is entirely worth fighting to keep by paying more money. The laptop only has two internal msata connections and then a single sata3 controller in the dock. Specifications page on it
So after some thinking and considering my next purchase for a SSD in a couple months. I would stick with just getting a single 1tb for now and using one of the original two 120 ssd's for the main with the OS. reason being. allows you to upgrade more later on. Save a bit of money for better upgrades. such as getting a pro instead of the evo version. As the evo is TLC which is slightly slower and wont last nearly as long as the PRO which is MLC. The original two ssd's may not last that long depending on if they are MLC or TLC and how full they are and daily usage. As the unused space tends to be constantly written over more causing the drive to fail sooner. With that being said just putting the OS and then mirroring it with the other one for use as a back up, could last for a long time depending. The 860 evo is in MLC I think which is a big plus over the 850 evo. just some thoughts. though I dont know if they make a pro in msata. should have probably checked first
Something interesting to watch on SSD my current main drive is a 840 pro 256 gig which is the one that lasted the longest and was capable of doing 2.4pb
