2 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB in RAID?

Rich-Ando

Rich-Ando

Rich-Ando

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ok, having read everything and listening to the suggestions it would seem that most are opting for the Crucial RealSSD M4


i currently am using 2 x 150Veloci Raptors so i might as well get
2 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive [CT128M4SSD2]

i have an

Asus P6X58D-E
12G or corsair Dominator
2 x 1TB drives for important storage

question, as i can't seem to find out how to turn the raid off on the mobo yet (lost book) i was wondering if anybody had any reason why i shouldn't raid 2 of these up for OS?
 
Don't forget you only have the Intel SATA 2 ports, or the crappy Marvell SATA 3 ports, so you're unlikely to get the full speed from the SSD's.
 
thanks for those replies.

i'll give that last suggestion some thought as well.

another point i forgot to ask was: -

i tend to leave my rig on 24-7, has anybody heard of these suffering from heat more than HDD's?
 
i too was thinking of 2 of these or maybe the vertex drives, but i didnt know some sata 3 ports were crappy, how do i know if i have a good sata 3 controller or not, i have a gigabyte x58 ud3r m/b
 
billysielu said:
TRIM is essential, don't RAID SSDs.
Click to expand...
Source, or is this just your opinion?

If you actually read reviews where drives are tested far past real life usage scenarios many modern drives have much more sophisticated controllers than early generation models and handle garbage collection just fine without trim. The Anandtech reviews go into this in detail for example.

Have a look on the relevant drive manufacturer forums as well. Speaking from personal experience I have 2 striped arrays and any potential slowdown over time caused by lack of trim is negligible compared to the doubling of speed you get with RAID 0.

Imho trim is more marketing spin than really necessary.
 
1st, i'll have to find out what the hell "trim" is :confused: before i can understand that reply.

also, why not raid them, everybody else seemed to say that was the way to go?

had a thought about it and if i went for the SSD then even though you say i have a crappy sata3 port (didn't know this), i should still see an amazing improvement according to everybody's replies over SSD speed compared to Raptors.

the other point is the future one. if i change my mobo in the near future for one that has better sata3 ports then i can use these SSD's again.

is it just a case of installing both into the raid and then installing OS as normal or do i have to mess about with them?
 
right i've read a little on TRIM but can't say i fully understand it.

1) can the SSD's not be defragged as a normal drive?
2) is it only when they are set in Raid0 that the TRIM doesn't work?
3) if i'm using 2 of these drives will i be better off losing out on TRIM and using 2 in raid0 OS/ video editing & games or 1 as OS and the other as editing/games
 
1) no, don't do this.
2) yes, or if they are improperly installed (windows 7)
3)you get about double transfer rates, but access times are so low on one SSD you probably won't notice a difference in opening programs/ booting windows. I don't know what video editing requires.

There is some debate about the importance of trim on the new drives. The on board garbage collection is said to be better now making trim less necessary. Anand thinks that the M4s have the worst garbage collection of the new generation, though they are generally a more reliable drive than the sandforce.

If you are raiding, don't get an M4. Now the anecdotal evidence from raid users i've read, suggests that the performance degradation without trim is not significant enough to be easily perceived, but I have no benchmarks to show how much the numbers go down (they will). But then, even with trim and garbage collection, SSDs still lose some performance as you fill them up.

If it does go wrong, you can always secure erase and install a back up (you should be backing up anyway with raid 0).

So, up to you really. It's a little experimental, but you will certainly get more performance. Of course, you will probably never actually see that performance in real life, unless you're transferring files to another raid array of SSDs.
 
thanks for that input.

video editing requires a lot of processing and saving/loading of large files.

some of the files i am playing with are around 15-25G in size. i was hoping that the SSD read/write time would improve it.
i will be transferring files to another raid but they are standard 1TB HDD's

i don't care about how much longer it takes to load windows originally cos i hardly ever turn the rig off, hence my concern about the heat performance in relation to HDD's.

if i had them in raid0 i would back them up anyway, seeing as i was stupid enough to not do it this time i have learnt my lesson hopefully.

don't you just hate not being able to make your mind up?

some say get Crucial, some say the others are fine.
some say raid them, some say don't.

it will be windows 7 64 ultimate on the OS so i don't quite know if you meant that was one of the things that work properly or not.
 
I mean windows 7 sets up trim automatically when newly installed on an SSD. If done improperly, like trying to move the windows installation from an HDD to an SSD, then it needs to be enabled manually.

I guess you might see improvements with large video files loading into memory. Though you will only be able to transfer files to another disk (or raid array) at the maximum speed of that disk. You could move files faster between two SSDs than between this SSD array and an HDD array.

Remember that these are likely compressed file formats, so make sure you pick a drive with good performance there (synchronous or toggle memory: vertex, hyper x, force gt, mushkin chronos deluxe, patriot wildfire.) Again, if you are raiding (and only then), then M4 is apparently a particularly bad choice.

No need to worry about heat, SSDs use less power and generate less heat than HDDs (no spinning disks).
 
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now it's becoming clearer, many thanks for your help.

it will be a fresh Win 7 64 ultimate installation, so no need to worry about TRIM then.

the heat is less of a problem than standard HDD's..that's another worry out of the window then.

the only time i would transfer them to another disc is for backup purposes anyway and when i do that the folders can be up to 300G so i normally just click it and leave it, it takes an hour or so at the moment i think.

my intention is to load and process the files on the same drive as the program & OS thus hopefully giving me the fastest responses i can get.

the only problem i have now is this reason for not using the Crucial ones on Raid0. one drive at 128G is just far too small and the price jumps massively for larger SSD's.
not sure if it is just scaremonger or a real common problem but a lot of members seem to be reporting other drives as suspect for reliability.

maybe 2 of the drives @128G, 1 as storage and the other as OS. probably a bit slower but still faster transfer than i have now?
or 2 reliable recommended drives for raid?
 
The issue with TRIM was much larger with the 1st generation Sandforce chipsets (Vertex 2 drives). The garbage collection circuitry in those would max out at 80MB/s which is what lead to a lot of the rage about not using SSDs in RAID.

The newer Sandforce chips bottom out at around 180MB/s and the Marvell chipset doesn't really suffer from the same problems at all. :)
 
RAID 0 SSD's is the most pointless option in my opinion. The whole point of SSD's is they are so much faster than mechanical HDD's that they make options like this redundant.

Just buy a bigger single SSD, enjoy the trim support and the high speeds along with the simplicity. RAID0 SSD's only look good for those that spend their lives benchmarking.
 
this is the exact reason i come here, a brilliant forum with people willing to offer advise on things i don't know :cool:

so then i am better off buying one drive such as

Crucial RealSSD M4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive [CT256M4SSD2]

instead of 2 smaller ones. it's a shame they are still outlandishly expensive for the sizes. i'll have to keep it OS & a few main used programmes, the rest can go on the other drives.

just need to find out how to turn the raid off on my board now. read the instructions but i can't seem to get the screen up.

thanks everybody for your input.
 
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