best raid config

vectisitch · 15 May 2013 at 22:46

corsair have honoured my RMA on a faulty force 3 120gb so,,,, i run my ssd's in raid 0. now i have 2 corsair force 3's and 2 intel 330 120gb ssd's. i want to set them up so i don't lose everything next time. i'm thinking of doing raid 10 with the 2 force 3's and also putting the 2 intels in to make raid 10. or is there a better way. i want the speed of raid 0 but want backup too.

rpstewart · 16 May 2013 at 08:50

If you want a backup then don't use RAID, it's an availability solution, nothing else. For example if you mistakenly delete a file it's gone, same as if you'd done it on a single disk.

If you want a proper backup then you need to be looking at a proper second copy of stuff separate to and unconnected with the original. An external HDD and some kind of file syncing software is the usual method.

pryere · 17 May 2013 at 21:29

rpstewart said:
If you want a backup then don't use RAID, it's an availability solution, nothing else. For example if you mistakenly delete a file it's gone, same as if you'd done it on a single disk.

If you want a proper backup then you need to be looking at a proper second copy of stuff separate to and unconnected with the original. An external HDD and some kind of file syncing software is the usual method.

I still fail to grasp why anyone would need/want to RAID SSD's.

vectisitch · 17 May 2013 at 22:01

i raided them so i could double my storage capacity when ssd's were expensive still. and you doo get a performance boost

pryere · 19 May 2013 at 17:53

vectisitch said:
i raided them so i could double my storage capacity when ssd's were expensive still. and you doo get a performance boost

With the loss of trim.

vectisitch · 20 May 2013 at 18:46

trim is now working on raided ssd's with the latest rst drivers and z77 chipset. this is why it's now a good idea to raid ssd's. blazing speed and bigger capacity. it's a win win as long as you back up which is why i want to know which raid is best. i think i'm gonna go raid 10 with the 4 ssd's i got

spooks · 24 May 2013 at 16:54

RAID 10 is what you want mate. Disk Mirroring and Striping. Maximum performance and redundancy as well.

Mercutio · 24 May 2013 at 21:01

I'm not sure trim works on raid 10. It probably does but they were pretty specific about the raid modes support (i.e only raid 0). Raid 0+1 would likely work exactly as said (but I don't think intel RST does 0+1), raid 10 does slightly different things with the data so may not be trim compatible. I'd read around about that first.

Also, agreed with rpstewarts post. If you want backup, forget raid. It doesn't protect you like a backup would. If your idea of a backup is for your data to survive a drive failure (and only this) then... fair enough. A proper backup would still protect you better from logical corruption/OS screwing up your data or deleting something stupid (though again, that's USUALLY recoverable with undelete software and a handful of good-luck charms).

Actually, sorry to ask a rather off-topic question... is raid 10 with 4 disks faster than 2 of the same disks in raid 0? I've come from the 0+1 mentality, raid 10 obviously messes about with the strip positioning etc too. Reading around but haven't found a simple performance example yet.