Should I Replace my WD Black 4TB Storage Drive with Sata SSD?

Hello All

Currently use the WD Black 4TB Storage Drive for Storage of Music, Videos and such--should i replace that with SSD at some point?

Bit Nervous that since the music folder changes often and, that it would be too much writes on the drive

Video folder doesn't change too much

Games are on Seperate Sata SSD Drive
M.2 Is on boot drive NvMe 500GB (no other NvMe ports)

P.S. Also my Onedrive folder stored on the 4TB to keep writes down on The NvMe Boot drive
*not sure i had to do that*, i suppose i could reduce what i store on Onedrive in the future for it*

SSD's are more resilient than you imagine.

Yeah i tend to baby my SSD Drives---purposely bought 4TB drive, for a while even kept my user Folders, Downloads, and everything on the Storage drive.

Then after my last clean install of Windows 11 Pro--Left Default user Folders alone for first time ever and just store purposely Music Now on 4TB drive, Videos in separate folder, and Onedrive still lol

I tend to worry alot--and sometimes over nothing

Same reason i have an HHD for same purpose (storage & downloads). Not a streamer or active Video/Photo editor - thus, the extra speed of an SSD doesn't mean much for a home user level of storage use.

On the other hand - YouTube is running more than 60% of the time i spend on the PC (mostly in the background - since i rarely find). And i do have the browser on the SSD - which makes it the main culprit for wear and tear.

So hey, personally i wouldn't do it for your storage needs . Maybe buy an extras SSD for gaming (modern games - do get quite big this days) - if that's your thing.

yeah i'm a primarily gamer, web browser, Youtuber watcher

No streaming or Video/Photo Editing

Sure i use Windows Game DVR to personally record sometimes my game activity, and then i watch it later, and see if i can do find ways to say do Firefighter SImulator : The Squad single player missions faster for more XP lol.

Though not sure why i still save each video on Onedrive for really, maybe i am pack rat lol... Or just want something to eventually use Comcast Xfinity 100MB Upload with once gets to my area lol

Do have The following in Externals
8TB WD My Book (Primary backup drive)
8TB Seagate in External Enclosure--(Twitter Contest Won 2019)
1TB WD Black in External Enclosure (Former internal drive for Desktop before got the 4TB on Christmas 2018)
WD My Passport 2TB (Blue) 2018 Christmas Purchase
WD My Passport 2TB (RED) 2019 Birthday Purchase
Seagate Portable 1TB USB 3.2 Gen 1 1TB Extra External
WD Elements Desktop 500GB (Very First External, 2003) USB 2.0
and Various Flash Drives of various sizes

*a bit obessed with backing up files after losing alot of files back in 2005/2006 with a major virus infection--users fault*

((Too many Externals--Maybe)

Gigabyte B460M_DS3H Rev 1.0 has a couple of pcie 3.0 x1 slots. You could use an x1 adapter (which are very cheap) for an nvme disk.
That will give higher scores on crystaldisk than a sata ssd. Whether you be able to notice any difference irl is a different question.

4 tb nvme are not cheap. Corsair mp510 have a very endurance rating 6,820 tbw for the 4 tb.

Sata ssd have the advantage of easy hotswap.

Well my Pcie 3.0 x1 slots are taken up

1 Blocked by Video card i think

and other one is Taken up by WIfi/Bluetooth card

And Yes i know 4TB NvMe not cheap at all, nor is the 4TB Sata version either

Plus even if i had available X1 slot, the PCie slot covers are twist and snap off type, might be harder to remove now with the board installed

Not a great deal of connectivity on that mobo.

If you are going the ssd route it is simpler to use sata ssd in a hotswap caddy which fits in 5.25 bay in the front of the pc case. Unless you are unfortunate enough to have a case with no front bays.

The very high endurance 4tb corsair is £320 atm. Sata ssd of 4tb can be had for half that cost.

Yeah no front bays on this Thermaltake V200 TG RGB Case (so that's out as well as an option) No there isn't a great deal of connectivity unfortunately.

This board was offered as a Combo from Local shop in June 2020 when i bought my 1660 Super video card, and in my old case it was over heating with my Intel 7700, so at the time i was like ok i'll update Case, motherboard, cpu, and keep rest of the hardware same lol. Added the M.2 NvMe in the only slot at Christmas 2020

So just will make due best i can til i someday upgrade case again

@bikemanI7


If the last four characters of the model number are FZBX... hang on to that WD Black for dear life.
Those are the god WD Black drives. Any other last four characters, are just the generic WD Blacks.

Even if you get an SSD, keep that WD Black.

Confirms the last 4 are FZBX! Will definitely hang onto it for dear life!

Originally before i won the Seagate 8TB in Twitter CES Contest in January 2019, the 4TB was originally gonna be strictly Backup drive, then plans changed lol. Probably a good thing the plans did change after all

FZEX For the Older WD Black 1TB in the External Enclosure

Will Definitely Keep this WD Black 4TB drive even if i someday go more SSD

bikemanI7 said:

FZEX For the Older WD Black 1TB

Click to expand...

For the 1 and 2TB WD Blacks... FZEX were the good ones.


Psst... Hey man, want the good stuff? I got some FZEX and some FZBX here. ^^






CMR recording technology, 256MB cache. Fast as all get out.

Reason started this topic--trying to decide what to get Christmas this year lol...But think drive wise i'm good after all lol i think lol.

External drives i got way more than enough lol

Honestly i don't know why i didn't get a PCie Gen 3 Western Digital NvMe when i purchased this Samsung 970 Evo Plus NvMe lol, guess went for what thought was best at the time lol.

Might just save some money and by Spring if i can get to a local shop--finally upgrade case from this limited airflow Thermaltake V200 TG RGB case

bikemanI7 said:

Might just save some money and by Spring if i can get to a local shop--finally upgrade case from this limited airflow Thermaltake V200 TG RGB case

Click to expand...

Good idea.

Check out Fractal Design cases. Great air flow. Dust filters all around. Built well.
Phanteks, Cooler Master and Corsair have some good ones as well.

Ghot said:

Good idea.

Check out Fractal Design cases. Great air flow. Dust filters all around. Built well.
Phanteks, Cooler Master and Corsair have some good ones as well.

Click to expand...

Will Definitely look into case options, Fractal, Corasir, or other companies, anything but Thermaltake i think lol for the future lol. Any of the above mentioned brands should have awesome airflow

*I'd do the hardware transfer myself if i had peace from other Family members, as i did a case transfer once before in my life back in 2009 with older hardware, and that system worked fine for years* But if no Peace, then i'll just have Shop do the Transfer once again

bikemanI7 said:

I'd do the hardware transfer myself if i had peace from other Family members

Click to expand...

Send them all on vacation.

NO, use ssd only for windows installation and for apps

I've had SSD's from back in 2009 that still haven't hit their write limits. I've never once worried about saving writes to my SSD drive. I've always found I would abandon the drive for space reasons or performance reasons long before it's useful life expired.

pparks1 said:

I've had SSD's from back in 2009 that still haven't hit their write limits. I've never once worried about saving writes to my SSD drive. I've always found I would abandon the drive for space reasons or performance reasons long before it's useful life expired.

Click to expand...

Also, the endurance limits are nonsense really. All the limits are a vendor stated limit, so if you fail before that limit, you cannot claim against any warranties.

Suppose a drive has a real limit of 256 TB of writes, and vendor states a warranty limit of 100 TB, then the endurance counter in tools like crystaldiskinfo counts down 1 % each TB written, and eventually reaches 0 once 100 TB of writes is reached. In reality, you still have 156 TB of writes left (i.e. drive is only 40% of way through its life.

If you look at the smart attribute for endurance - it starts at 0 and increments by 1% each time 1% of writes have been done (the tools turn this round to show percentage left rather than percentage used). If you read the definition of the attribute - it can actually go to 256 percent. So what happends if the attribute reaches 256? All it means it stops counting.

I wonder if the tools which count down rather than up, ever go negative LOL, but I have never got anywhere near the vendo nonsense limits let alone real limits.

The other really important factor is that write endurance is NOT THE ONLY mode of failure of the drive. Like any device with electronic interfaces, the drive electronics (transferring data to and from pc) can fail any time. Heat / static discharges, inferior electrical components being key reasons (SSDs are not immune to being dropped but more resilient than HDDS)

It is absolutely pointless worrying about drive endurance. I have had a couple of SSDs fail, but not due write endurance.

So what should people do?
Basically no difference to how they considered HDDs i.e. make regular backups (preferably image backups) and replace drive if it fails.

As you say, I nearly always run out of capacity long before actual failures.

I've always been a worrier on The topic of SSD Writes, to the point of going to extremes to make sure nothing much wrote to the M.2 NvMe if i could help it

*Moving OneDrive Folder to 4TB Storage Drive User Folder that i created lol, Not much left there after May 2023 clean install of Windows 11 Pro--i left Default Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music and Video folder alone this time for first time ever, previously used to change location manually in the properties change location option all the time--(Created a Separate Folder on 4TB Storage Drive to store the Music Though)

*Made sure files downloaded to the 4TB up til Mays clean install, i never even saved Downloads to M.2 up til May

*Music that i typically use for my DJin in Secondlife program with Virtual Dj --kept on 4TB for now as that changes quite often when i purchase newer music with MS Bing Reward gift cards from Amazon off and on (In Separate Folder that i created

*Videos some saved on 4TB if i wanna keep some longer, but some has been moved off to external drive

I know i probably worry way too much and still goto extremes that others probably don't go for, but guess just me in that regard, i tend to panic at times with worry, why i so far refused to even get a liquid cooler for my CPU, as still scared as well of that that its gonna leak lol, but next Processor in the future i might have to force myself to not worry on that, and use PC as normal and hopefully i don't panic checking the system constantly lol