Bought PC with 5400RPM HDD

[jonbey]

I bought a refurbished PC so my son can play games and use an Elgato device

PC specs match what was advertised, but the ad did not mention the speed of the 2Tb HDD:

Dell OptiPlex Gaming Desktop (Intel Core i5-4570, 16 GB RAM, 2 TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB Graphics, Windows 10, WiFi) (Renewed)

Should I send back and request better HDD, or just put one in myself?

I have no disc, but there is some sort of Windows recovery and a windows activation key on the box.

[Brad]

Just add another drive in as a secondary. It's better to have a dedicated drive for video work separate from the operating system anyway.

[jonbey]

manufacturer replied, offered to send Windows on a 60Gb SSD, maybe I should offer to pay a little more for a larger SSD?

The PC will be used for more than just elgato - hopefully he will do homework on it, and i think he'll want to play PC games too once he realises what he has (and I might too!)

Seems daft having an OS running on a 5400 drive - I remember ordering a computer over a decade ago and 5400 was considered too slow for games then.

[Brad]

In that case, I agree, you should try to get a higher capacity SSD.

[84lion]

I would probably purchase a cheap 256 GB SSD and adapter, install that, use something like EaseUS Todo Backup to clone the OS on the 2TB drive to the smaller SSD, then use the 2TB drive as a storage drive. I found 256 GB SSDs for about $30 on Amazon; didn't check on adapter prices but I can't imagine they'd be too expensive. You might need a bigger SSD depending on the size of what's on the 2TB drive.

[babygdav]

Elgato.
Let's say https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/game-capture-hd60-s

Capture bitrate is 40Mbps max, which is 5MB/sec.
Even a 2TB hard drive can write at least 50MB/sec, if not faster, nowadays.

Absolutely no problems recording with the elgato.

As for games, sure, the load times will be slower than a ssd, but doesn't make a game unplayable since almost all are designed to load and play fine off hdds (honestly can't think of one right now with a ssd spec).

Your game performance is limited by the 1650 and 6 generation old cpu, not by the hard drive in most cases playing modern AAA titles.

https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/gpu/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650/intel-core-i5-4570-3-20ghz/ultra

[lingyi]

I would probably purchase a cheap 256 GB SSD and adapter, install that, use something like EaseUS Todo Backup to clone the OS on the 2TB drive to the smaller SSD, then use the 2TB drive as a storage drive. I found 256 GB SSDs for about $30 on Amazon; didn't check on adapter prices but I can't imagine they'd be too expensive. You might need a bigger SSD depending on the size of what's on the 2TB drive.

+1 to buying a new drive and keeping the 2TB for storage/capture. I'm assuming the adapter is a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter which isn't necessary, since the drive is so light you can put it anywhere, I just leave mine hanging, but if you want to mount it properly, I recommend this one: https://www.amazon.com/Fenlink-Internal-Hard-Drive-Converter/dp/B01ELRRKW8/ref=sr_1_20...%2C240&sr=8-20

Before cloning the drive, be sure to get the Windows key (most likely OEM volume license) with Magical Jellybean in case you ever need to reinstall on another drive. In addition to regular backups, I recommend buying a second SSD as a complete backup/restore solution once you've added all your programs and tweaked the settings. It's quick and easy to reinstall Windows, much longer and tedious to have to reinstall all your programs and tweak.

[Cornucopia]

Yes, the 2TB is fine for reduced bitrate/compressed video capture, but will be NOTICEABLY slower if you use that as the main OS/boot drive. Go with 256+ GB SSD (preferrably m2 if the mobo is compatible, but at least 3rdgen sata). I hear 1 TB SSDs are a good price right now.
Use both. QUITE common in editing systems, if less so for gaming.

Scott

[babygdav]

It's a 6 generation old pc for gaming - backup??

Wouldn't even bother whether ssd or hd... Unless the kid is making money off the gaming videos and those are critical to the business.

Fast enough to wipe the drive if infected or replace if broken, install Windows 10 + Steam. Most hdds good for several years - by that time, new PC.

...

But, if one must.
Grab a bunch of cheap, good ssd drives like the Inland at Microcenter.com (128GB under $15, 256GB under $31).
RAID the 2-4 drives together (striped, raid 0 or better) to get 2x to 4x the performance of a single ssd drive. (E.g. $60 for 4 128gb ssd, each with 500MB/sec reads = 2000MB/sec read in RAID 0. Yes, even faster with m.2 drives, but assuming cheap is the key here given the pc age + motherboard probably has no m.2 support, only sata.)

[usually_quiet]

+1 for a separate boot drive and storage drive and +1 for an SSD boot drive. I bought a ~500GB SSD (PNY) for my HTPC's boot drive and boot times are significantly faster, program load times are faster and downloaded updates to the TV guide database are completed more quickly.

My HTPC has an i5 4570S. I can verify that the motherboards released for Haswell processors did not provide m.2 slots for installing NVMe drives yet, so those are not good drive options.

Based on some of his other posts I think that jonbey is in the UK, so hardware sources, selection, and pricing are somewhat different for him.

[Prototype v1.0]

It's true that a 5400 RPM drive probably can transfer 50 MB/s - but that is at the beginning of the drive (the outer part of the spinning disk). Therefore, I'd keep the disk and resized the windows partition (the C drive) to - say 300 GB. Then have another partition for big files (large video files, etc). That way the disk search time (windows and apps) should be considerably reduced and the computer experience should be much better.

[abolibibelot]

It's true that a 5400 RPM drive probably can transfer 50 MB/s - but that is at the beginning of the drive (the outer part of the spinning disk).

A recent 5400 RPM 2TB HDD with 1TB platters (I don't know if larger ones exist yet) can reach a speed way above 50MB/s. I just did a quick test with an old WD20EARX and HD Sentinel (highly recommended utility by the way) : the average speed at the beginning is closer to 115MB/s, and it still reaches 50-55MB/s at the very end ("Surface test", sequential, limited to blocks 9900-9999 out of 9999). And this is a model with 4 platters, each with a 500GB capacity. The data rate is significantly improved with fewer platters of larger capacity.

Of course that's the sequential read performance, when it comes to accessing small files located all over the place (typical for a system drive with only one partition) such drives tend to be sluggish (it can be emulated with HD Sentinel by doing a Surface test in "random" mode). In that case, if no other option, reserving a small partition at the beginning as suggested above should indeed improve the general performance.

[lingyi]

I recently transferred ~9TB of videos, DVD and Blu-Ray rips to a 12TB drive and got 110-120MB/s sustained with peaks of 150-180MB/s with borth drives in a USB 3.0 enclosure. Too lazy to redo the calculations right now, but the total transfer time + verification confirmed the transfer speeds. I did this three times, main, backup and spare drive. Used a second PC for the spare drive backup.

Keep in mind that current 5400RRM drives usually have a 256MB or 512MB buffer, unlike older drives. If nothing else, I'd keep the 2TB and use it as a backup. OP, you do have a backup plan right?

[lingyi]

It's true that a 5400 RPM drive probably can transfer 50 MB/s - but that is at the beginning of the drive (the outer part of the spinning disk). Therefore, I'd keep the disk and resized the windows partition (the C drive) to - say 300 GB. Then have another partition for big files (large video files, etc). That way the disk search time (windows and apps) should be considerably reduced and the computer experience should be much better.

Ahhh...brings back memories of putting the Pagefile at the beginning, then the OS, then additional programs. Switched to separate OS and data drives a long, long time ago, and and SSD boot drive just long ago!