Raid 0 or separate

Deception · 29 Mar 2012 at 13:32

I was looking at purchasing another M4 128gb SSD as my other one is running low on space and I wish to put more games on it (like GW2 when it finally comes out).

Question is, would I benefit more from putting them in RAID 0 or leave them as seperate drives. I know the speeds will be a lot better, but would there any drawbacks.

Thanks

Steven

lamboman · 29 Mar 2012 at 14:01

The m4 doesn't have the absolute best garbage collection; it's okay. If you're going to do heavy writes very frequently, avoid, as TRIM isn't available yet for RAID 0 setups (Intel RST), and could help you.

Your boot times won't see an advantage, so if you don't "need" the speed for anything other than gaming, I'd probably leave it.

Deception · 29 Mar 2012 at 14:04

lamboman said:
The m4 doesn't have the absolute best garbage collection; it's okay. If you're going to do heavy writes very frequently, avoid, as TRIM isn't available yet for RAID 0 setups (Intel RST), and could help you.

Your boot times won't see an advantage, so if you don't "need" the speed for anything other than gaming, I'd probably leave it.

Yea, I was basically getting it put more games on, for better load times etc. Everything else on the SSD is speedy already.

Yeggstry · 29 Mar 2012 at 14:26

Depends on whether these games are steam games. If they are you can split your steam folder onto an HDD for those less frequently used (just been looking into it myself).

lamboman · 29 Mar 2012 at 14:37

If it's just games, to be honest I wouldn't bother. While the m4 is a fantastic drive and is hugely reliable, if one of them fails then you are left with nothing. Even if you backup, you're still most likely going to have a volume bigger than the capacity of one drive.

As Yeggstry said, it's worth having a standard mechanical drive for a secondary, then managing everything manually. If you want to go for two SSDs, I'd make sure that you have a backup, and not bother with RAID 0.

To be honest, SSDs are so fast that RAID 0 isn't really worth it for most of us.

Deception · 31 Mar 2012 at 19:42

Thanks a lot

Also, I know the Crucial M4 is probably the best buy, but I was looking at:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-076-OC&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=1427

and wondered what people's opinion was on the drive as it's a pretty good price.

philds · 31 Mar 2012 at 22:56

I've seen people advice against that OCZ as it's the SandForce controller that apparently degrades in performance greatly as the drive fills up due to the type of memory or storage method it uses. The Crucial M4 are decent and while aren't as fast as the Intel drives, are the best value for money (in performance and reliability).

I'm a big fan of Crucial anyway

Shame about no TRIM on Intel RAID, seems pointless going for RAID performance when lack of TRIM would bring the performance down anyway.

Mercutio · 12 Apr 2012 at 01:35

Trim support as far as I know is "incoming" though? (Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 11.5.0.1109)

Notes:

1. Known Issue is defined as a potential RST issue that has been replicated internally by the Rapid Storage Technology team but has not been root caused to be an RST defect.

2. This release will not enable the TRIM on RAID0 feature, but it will be added in the next RST 11.5 release. Contact your RST AE representative with questions.