Hmmm, SSD for boot drive.

Monkey Puzzle

Monkey Puzzle

Monkey Puzzle

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Joined
13 Mar 2006
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Looking at getting a SSD; looking to pay less than £200 really - is it worth waiting for SSD prices to come down, or will I probably be waiting a while?

Was looking at either the

Intel X25-M 80GB for £192ish

Crucial M225 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £170

Corsair Performance P64 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £152ish

or 2 x Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive in RAID0. £186 total.

1) Is there much difference in performance between the M225 and P64 to justify the extra £20?

2) Is the Intel much faster than the M225?

3) Would the Kingston RAID set-up be the fastest, do they use TRIM, and is RAID problematic, with TRIM etc? Would the extra speed justify the possible extra hassle of RAID?
 
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1. Not in performance, but in terms of support (regular firmware updates), TRIM and warranty the Crucial is probably worth the extra

2. No. You won't see a difference in day to day use.

3. Doubt it, No, No, No. The only SSDNow I would recommend is the SSDNow V 40gb which uses the Intel controller. The other SSDNow V series use the JMicron controller. The JMicron drives do not support TRIM as far as I'm aware, and you would also need drivers for your HD controller (usually on your motherboard) to support TRIM in RAID. No one has created drivers to support TRIM in RAID (yet). Overall RAID is not really problematic, it is set up just the same as any other SATA drive. The downside is there is no automatic cleaning of the used cells, so performance will degrade overtime - at the moment this means imaging your drive, breaking RAID, running a DOS application to clean it, then recreate your RAID and restore the image. It shouldn't take longer than an hour all told, and should only be necessary after several months of above average use.
 
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