[General Questions and Answers] MuriloRochaFernandes:
My laptop is dell inspiron core i5 5567, 8GB RAM and 1TB Hard disk.

Background:

If I'd enough money, I'd just go and buy a new laptop. But that's the problem, I don't have it. I've seen my friends doing very perfect for be it web development or app development in 128GB SSD and 512GB Hard disk(even now, few months ago, to be precise).

I'm planning to learn web development, make personal projects(I Don't need to host them to public professionally, heroku will do the job. And backups of codes can be stored in github once the project is completed) so that I can apply for jobs. The jobs that I'm applying are the same that university graduate in USA does. (Only difference is that they treat you like sit and pay sit :))

I currently have a 1 TB hard drive. I still have 650-700 GB of space left on hard drive. Problem is that I've used it for more than 10000 hrs and the disk health isn't looking great either according to crystaldiskinfo and crystaldiskmark(Although crystaldiskinfo said "GOOD" health). (These problems are being faced since long time but I didn't code for more than 2-3 weeks so I didn't care that much at that time)I faced problems like even VS code used to hang, 100% disk usage would make me suffer(in a fresh installed OS, this'd happen even while not coding, it'll randomly happen like that. But not forever. If I restarted, then it'd be gone. But again after some time, it'd come. I'd tried everything given on the internet and forums about it and it wasn't fixed permanently->the only conclusion that I found is "Get a SSD".), Pycharm repeatedly kept crashing(no matter how many times I re-installed and re-setted up) and a general perception that I built was "Applications are getting optimized for speed of SSDs, and everyone must have a SSD for their C drive". I ignored it at first, because I felt like why should I get it? My laptop is dell inspiron core i5 5567. The SSD that I can put here will have speed of 62.5MB/sec. And even my current hard disk has similar speed.

I'm getting more speed in my 5yo hard disk than that'd come from my new SSD. LOL. (It's done on Ubuntu on small sample though). BTW which company's SSD is great? Is TOSHIBA's SSDs good? Do tell about that as well.

View attachment 261142

I can share the link to all the details of the problem I was having, and various other details which will only make this post unread-ably long if I post it here, if you allow me to share. It is in superuser website.

HENCE, I'm switching to hybrid storage with SSD and Hard disk.

Every penny counts to me and I don't want any underutilizations as well as risking not enough SSD space. (Storings data like music, images, videos isn't a problem in this case, because I've very less of them).

I can get a new laptop once I get a job with 1 year of salary.

Requirements:

Here's my software requirements. The storage are just my guesses, your insights would be valuable here.

1) Windows 10/11.

2) Microsoft Office Professional containing word,doc, ppt, excel.

3) Brave browser (Not considering downloads for browser. Downloads can go to hard disk)

4) Chrome browser

5) Firefox browser

6) images2pdf softwares

7) IDE(probably VScode or pycharm whatever supports web development and is easy to use for beginners)

8) Web development installations (for 1 stack like MERN, MEAN etc)

9) Viber/Telegram Downloads (Can be removed regularly on unwanted basis)

10) Save codes and notes on Joplin while learning. Notes will contain images+codes+text.

11) Note taking app on Joplin

Windows 11 would need 64GB, I don't think my laptop would support windows 11 so at max my windows 10 can go upto 64GB

MS-Office could take 4GB.

While most browsers take 100MB for installing but for storing cache, bookmarks etc I'm not sure how much would they be taking!

images2pdf type software would take 500MB. (I use online tools mostly but sometimes for special files and situations, I use this desktop application).

I'll need Joplin for note taking. It'd take 500MB+(size of Notes pdf). If I can install it in Hard disk, No issues at all. Can I? Is it possible? I'm going t use caddy and use both Hard disk and SSD at one laptop internally. I'll do the same for Viber and Telegram so that the downloads stay at Hard disk as they're not very important and in very less quantity as I don't have tons of people out there in Viber and Telegram.

I've Never done any web development so I'm not sure how much space learning any of those stack would take. Like space taken by django, a SQLserver etc. I'm not talking about exe file size but the size taken by them after installation.

My files storage requirements (of current,for storing datas like videos, audios, pictures,pdfs etc):

1) Important docs 34.7MB

2) Study materials that needs to be saved forever 41.5 GB ( I can instead just index the name of the book and download it later as they're all downloaded from online. More than 90% storage can be freed up from 41.5GB)

3) Very important courses downloads 103.16 GB.

4) Unimportant courses 206.1 GB (I downloaded them online, It's very less likely that I'm going to use them. They're not very important. But I could need them if a course is really good or if the topic is really tough and I need multiple insights)

So, I need around 110 GB of files and multimedia storage. I really don't want to waste SSD space by storing them so I'm instead planning to get 128GB pen drive for it. It's because I won't use this course heavily but they are useful. But I'm hearing things that pen drives are sit. Losing pendrives isn't the problem for me but it could instead be quality and durability. Original pen drives aren't generally sold here so loosing data could be a big risk with that.

For those unimportnat 2016.1 GB of course, I'd just keep them where they're currently at-1TB Hard disk.

HELP Question:

In my region, If 1 TB hard drive costs x, then 128GB pen drive costs 0.307x and 256GB SSD 0.538x and 512GB SSD costs 1.153x. I'm not mentioning budget because I'm not buying from amazon or any American/International sites.

Can you share your ideas about what should I do?

As I said above, this is My view:

1) Get 128GB pen drive to store 103.16GB of "Very Important Courses"

2) Buy 256GB SSD. 64GB for OS(Windows 10 as I don't think windows 11 will work in my laptop) and 192GB for files.

Is there better approach to this?

Remind me of things that I'm not noticing atm.

Extra:

While I've said this for web development, I really would love information about android/IOS app development setup required (storage only).