New SSD or keep RAID-0 F3's

Prophet · 18 Mar 2010 at 16:10

I currently have 2 X Samsung F3 500GB drives in RAID-0 which I've been happy with so far. While bored at work I've been toying with purchasing an SSD just for my OS and Apps and using the 500GB's as data drives to go with the others.

Questions are:

1. Would an SSD be much quicker than the RAID-0

2. Without breaking the back what drive is the 'must have'

3. Any tweaks needed or is it just plug and play ala mechanical drives.

OS is Windows 7.

Apps will mostly be photo editing.

Zarf · 18 Mar 2010 at 16:20

1) Yes

2) Depends on the bank, but the Intel X25-M G2 is a solid choice. If you cant afford that get a Crucial M225.

3) Plug and play, run a windows performance evaluation and it'll disable Defrag for you, which is the only important tweak. Make sure your BIOS is set to put the storage controller in AHCI mode for best performance. Drivers wise, if you install the Intel Rapid or Matrix Storage drivers, you'll need the Intel SSD Toolbox to schedule a regular TRIM to keep your drive in top shape. With the default windows drivers TRIM is automatic.
Performance is better with the Intel Drivers, but there's not much in it.

Prophet · 18 Mar 2010 at 16:33

Cheers Zarf

I'll take a look at the drives you've mentioned.

jagga · 18 Mar 2010 at 21:50

get 2 or 3 of these in raid0:-http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-013-OC&tool=3

these drives in raid0 will blow away any single ssd

with 3 you will get 600 mbs read and about 460mbs write

make sure to flash the dirves with the new 1.5 firmware

that way u dont have to worry about trim not passing through the raid controller

1.5 firmware is top notch and the drives will not degrade in raid0

the firmware will keep them always as fast as day 1

if u want speed and good value they are hard to beat and will make your f3 look like a tortoise

master811 · 20 Mar 2010 at 12:03

Putting the SSDs in Raid, won't really improve everyday performance though, yes you will get higher sequential speeds, but normal booting up and loading etc won't be much different compared to just one of them. The main advantage will be the extra space as 30GB isn't a great deal, and you will need to keep it below about 24GB anyway.

jbloggs · 20 Mar 2010 at 13:08

The Intel X-25-M G2 is probably the best in the performance/value stakes...

Wouldn't bother put 2/3 SSDs in RAID0 as in general usage you will see no performance increase; where you would see a decent improvement (with SSDs in RAID0) would be if you worked with large (video) files (copying/moving) and (or) regularly unzipping compressed archives...