I bought my first SSD around 7 years ago, but I’ve always had a hard drive on my main rig. Even now, I have a 4TB hard drive in addition to my 2TB NVMe SSD. Apart from all my old photos, videos, movies, music, and OS partition images, I use the hard drive to store most of my game library. The only games allowed on my SSD are the ones I’m currently playing; the rest of them always reside on the hard drive. Just like the other rarely accessed data on the HDD, most of my backlog doesn’t need to be on the SSD.
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My backlog doesn’t need to occupy precious SSD space
Be gone, games that I’ve been avoiding for years
Let’s face it, many of us don’t play games as much as we’d like to (or used to). It’s been ages since I finished an entire campaign — the last one I remember is Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. At any given point, my SSD only has 2–3 games that I keep switching between — when Alan Wake 2 gets too much, I switch to Black Mesa or GTA V. So, the rest of my library doesn’t need to sit idle on the SSD, occupying precious space that can be utilized better by other data.
Deleting the games that I know I’ll never get around to is a step too extreme, hence I choose the next best option — storing them on my capacious hard drive, ready to be revisited when I feel it’s the right time. This way, I can keep my SSD free for the programs and work documents that I use every day. It’s not even about limited space on the SSD — it’s a 2TB drive after all — but rather about keeping different types of data segregated between different kinds of drives.
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I haven’t played many demanding games lately
In the last 5 years, I’ve only played a handful of new and demanding games on my gaming PC. I’ve been gravitating toward the classics and slightly older games, especially the ones I enjoyed the first time around. These titles don’t seem to be impacted in any way by the HDD’s slow read speeds. Forza Horizon 4, Dishonored 2, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus were some of the titles I replayed last year, and I didn’t feel the loading times were any slower than those of the titles I have on my SSD.
Even the backlog I maintain on the Backloggd website has more classic games that I have never played, compared to recent titles like Black Myth: Wukong, Hellbade II, and Silent Hill 2. Instead of transferring these titles to the SSD when I need them, I simply launch them from the HDD itself, and have a good hour or two of gaming without feeling like I’m missing out on anything.
HDDs still trump SDDs in price
It’s hard to ignore the value
It’s undeniable that hard drives still win in the cost department, especially when you move up in capacity. For data hoarders and gamers who play multiple 100GB+ games simultaneously, all-SSD storage might not be the most cost-effective idea. While I’m not someone who regularly plays large games like COD: Modern Warfare, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I still like to keep most of my larger titles on the hard drive.
HDDs still cost almost 40% less than SSDs when comparing 2TB drives, not even considering Gen5 SSDs. So, most people can still go with a 1TB SSD and 2TB/4TB HDD for their gaming PC, and still enjoy the benefits of both fast and cost-effective storage. With the reliability and satisfactory performance that comes with cost-effective HDDs even in 2025, I don’t see myself ditching HDDs completely any time soon.
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SSD + HDD is still a valid combination in 2025
SSDs might have come down in price a lot over the last five years, but hard drives still have a place in most gaming PCs. Even if you’re someone who deletes anything they’re not currently playing, you might need an HDD for storing backups, old photos & videos, media files, or other rarely accessed data. HDDs are significantly cheaper than SSDs, especially when you consider drives larger than 1TB in size. Combining a cost-effective SSD with a high-performance SSD is the best storage solution for most gamers.
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source: https://www.xda-developers.com/why-store-my-games-on-hdd-instead-of-ssd/
