2 SSD's in raid 0

Boozebeard · 16 Jun 2010 at 15:11

I'm thinking of buying an ssd.

I was planning on buying this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-047-OC&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=1668

But I could also get 2 of these else where for about £200

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-002-CR&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=1668

I think there used to problems with not being able to use trim when ssd's where raided. Is this fixed and is there anything else I should know about raiding ssd's? Or raiding in general, as I have never done it before.

roachyuk · 17 Jun 2010 at 10:13

i was wondering the same thinking of goin raid myself with 2 x25 80gb...

Banzai_Joe · 17 Jun 2010 at 11:37

heh....me too, as i was thinking of using 2 x X25-M's in raid 0.
But i tend to hear folks say that SSD's in raid are more likely to fail than mechanical drives.
Why? I don't know, its just what i've heard/read around the t'interwebby.

Zarf · 17 Jun 2010 at 13:30

Banzai_Joe said:
heh....me too, as i was thinking of using 2 x X25-M's in raid 0.
But i tend to hear folks say that SSD's in raid are more likely to fail than mechanical drives.
Why? I don't know, its just what i've heard/read around the t'interwebby.

This is rubbish really, Mechanical drives are a much bigger failure risk in RAID 0, both because the individual drives are more likely to fail, and because of the way drives are built. The most likely part to fail in an SSD is the NAND, and the density of the NAND chips is the same in a 64GB drive as in a 128GB drive of the same model, so the 64GB drive actually has half the amount of NAND chips to go wrong meaning a RAID of two 64GB drives has the same amount of NAND chips as a single 128GB drive.
In other words, SSD reliability depends more on the amount of storage in the array than on the number of disks.

jbloggs · 17 Jun 2010 at 13:44

I ran my OS from a RAID0 volume for well over 5 years and in that time I did not have a RAID array fail on me, I used a number of different mechanical HDDs and laterly 2 x 80GB Intel X-25 M G2s...so, although there is a possibility of a RAID0 array failing, I never experienced it; I used different Intel ICHxR controllers and a couple of Areca SATA RAID cards...

Boozebeard · 17 Jun 2010 at 23:22

I bought the OCZ anyway, it was more like £250 for the 2 M225 :mad:

Will install it when my new mobo arrives, hope it doesn't dissapoint.

Locky · 18 Jun 2010 at 11:38

In the years I have used RAID never had an array fail on me.

Zarf · 18 Jun 2010 at 12:23

Locky said:
In the years I have used RAID never had an array fail on me.

Oh, they definitely go, you've been lucky so far. I've had RAID0's break before and had a couple of deaths in my RAID5 array (not concurrently so no data loss)

I've also had to replace single drives in family members pc's a few times, 2.5" laptop drives are especially bad. I've had USB pen drives fail too.

Storage dying is a fact of life, It's vital to have a backup strategy for anything you don't want to lose, ideally off-site.