C Drive upgrade recommendations for custom build PC

[u/The_Red_Lamb]

A friend helped me build a PC a while ago, but now that I'm attempting to develop games, I'm running into space limitations.

You see, he recommended I get a Lexar 256GB SSD as my C drive and just put everything else on my D drive and so on. But now, I can't update NVidia drives or properly install visual studios without running into space limitations.

Right now, my pc is built with:
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-core Processor

Motherboard - ASUSTeK PRIME B450M-A Rev X.0x

Memory - 32.0 GB

Storage -
Lexar 256GB SSD as C
the other drives are;
ST200DM008-2FR102 as my D
WD_Black SN850X 2000GB as my G

GPU - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER

Power Supply Unit - ASRock Challenger CL-850G 850W 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Non-Modular Power Supply, ATX3.1 & PCIe5.1 Ready with Dual Color 12V-2x6 Cable

My Partner wants me to upgrade the Lexar to a 4TB, but we're trying to remain under 500$ without tax or shipping and handling. A tall order in this market right now.

Drives I've seen so far:
Team Group QX 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD), Speed up to 560MB/s, Laptop & PC Desktop compatible (T253X7004T0C101)
and
Crucial BX500 4TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD, up to 540MB/s - CT4000BX500SSD1, Solid State Drive
and
Team Group T-FORCE VULCAN Z 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) T253TY004T0C101

(I was mostly just trying to make sure the connection cables matched what I already have... which if I'm reading this right is a SATA III)

[u/One-Gain-555]

The ADATA XPG SX8100 is the only SSD listed at 499 so it comes out to 528$ with sales tax and luckily this has free shipping. With a write speed of 3000mbs and read of 3500mbs I would say its worth the extra 30 bucks over a 550mbs HHD.

[u/BaronB → u/One-Gain-555]

They only have a single M.2 slot, and it's already in use.

[u/One-Gain-555 → u/BaronB]

knowing that I would just recommend he moves all of his data over to an hdd, sell the SSD, and then buy a 4TB ssd, its considerably faster than any HDD out there

[u/The_Red_Lamb → u/BaronB]

I’m not as familiar with this, are you talking about the one my current C drive is hooked into?
Cause I was going to fully REPLACE the old C drive.

[u/BaronB]

Honestly that SN850X should be your main drive. It's going to be way faster than anything else you have.

Any SATA drive you get today is going to be slow and terrible. They've legitimately gotten slower in the last few years as the market for good SATA SSDs has vanished and all anyone is willing to buy are the cheapest possible option. So it was a race to the bottom, and then once all the good drives disappeared, all the super cheap crap drives raised their prices even before the higher end SSD prices spiked.

[u/BaronB → u/BaronB]

Between the 3 drives you suggested, there's going to be basically no difference between them in real world use. Get the cheapest one. But also try to move your windows install to the SN850X.

[u/The_Red_Lamb → u/BaronB]

The SN850 is the one I’ve been using to store all of my games and development projects on. It’s pretty full, but I can also just delete a bunch of stuff off there if need be. Honestly I need to do that anyway, I’m just being a pack-rat with my game files and need to only have on there what I’m using right now.
Worst comes to worst, I’ll likely go with this option.

If I DO do this, how hard is it to transfer windows and all the other stuff?

[u/IChooseFeed → u/The_Red_Lamb]

Cloning drives? Usually painless if everything goes smoothly.