How long will 2.5TB or 4.5TB last?

Hello. Sorry if I say some things wrong or if this is the wrong section for this topic. I have mostly been posting in Vita threads and I have not gotten very technical with my computer for awhile.

Since it is the Steam Summer sale, I have gotten ten games so far and there are still seven days left. Sadly, my 500gb hard drive is almost completely full, and I cannot download the games. I recently bought two 2TB hard drives and plan to install them soon. I am not sure if I want to mirror them and stick with a total 2.5TB, or raid them for 4.5TB. What do you think? My biggest concerns are if the hard drives will crash, and how many games I can install. I did the math and found that all of my games put together is about 700gb (Steam and retail). Quite a few of these games are from when I was younger, or they don't work with Windows 7 and I will probably never install them, but it will still be in the 600s for sure. I am wondering how many more games I will be able to install after I put the hard drives in with 2.5TB and 4TB. I have 96 games on Steam right now, but will always be getting more.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

Hello. Sorry if I say some things wrong or if this is the wrong section for this topic. I have mostly been posting in Vita threads and I have not gotten very technical with my computer for awhile.

Since it is the Steam Summer sale, I have gotten ten games so far and there are still seven days left. Sadly, my 500gb hard drive is almost completely full, and I cannot download the games. I recently bought two 2TB hard drives and plan to install them soon. I am not sure if I want to mirror them and stick with a total 2.5TB, or raid them for 4.5TB. What do you think? My biggest concerns are if the hard drives will crash, and how many games I can install. I did the math and found that all of my games put together is about 700gb (Steam and retail). Quite a few of these games are from when I was younger, or they don't work with Windows 7 and I will probably never install them, but it will still be in the 600s for sure. I am wondering how many more games I will be able to install after I put the hard drives in with 2.5TB and 4TB. I have 96 games on Steam right now, but will always be getting more.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

CBN16

2TB should be fine.

I have used about 400GB on the 640GB drive I put my games on.

I am mostly concerned with how many gigs are already being used for my games, and how much I will need in the future. Plus there's all of my tools and other programs which take quite a bit of space out of my drive. I am not really into downloading any videos on my computer, so I'm not really concerned about that. Also, I am thinking of putting Windows on a small SSD, but that's only 20gb of extra space cleared. Thanks for commenting guys.

I can't wait until that drive dies on you :P

I can't wait until that drive dies on you :P

zaku101

That's what I'm affraid of. It's raid them for more space, or mirror them for safety.

2TB will be more than enough for just games. Add an HD movie collection to that and maybe you'll hit the ceiling soon. Most games won't exceed about 25GB right? And I'm only saying 25GB because of Max Payne 3, but they'll inevitably range from less than 1GB to to 10GB mostly. The steam games were mostly older titles bundled with newer ones, so they won't take up much space.

Edit: Concerning RAID, you should be fine if it's just game installations. Not a big loss since you can just download from steam again or reinstall. I've always been scared of the fact that due to the synchronous nature of RAID, the slightest error may produce a BSOD, but then again, I'm sure the RAID interface has improved over the years and it's a bit "smarter" than I think.