RAID vs SSD

Stalker_26

Stalker_26

Stalker_26

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Afternoon all :)

First off - shout at me or shoot me if the question has either been asked before or is completely daft.

Currently i have a 480gb SSD, Force3 series i think and i love it, BUT, its too small (LOADS of games on it)
I have some additional SSD's but all are smaller (256 & 160 i think)

I want a big C drive but dont want to fork out on getting a larger SSD just yet, so, would i stand to gain if i had two 1tb drives for example?
Or even 2 2tb drives? (i have 3x1tb & 2x 2tb drives installed already)
And then set them up in RAID?

RAID is a whole new concept to me - i know there are (literally) millions of articles available that explain (some in mental detail) everything about RAID, but my attention span during reading is poor at best - unless of course i'm reading Nuts or Maxim (and by reading, yes i do mean 'reading' the pictures lol) so please be gentle if you're suggesting anything to do with raid :D

Cheers
Rich
 
Games are steam & Origin based, and i'm looking to achieve big storage but not compromise on speed (in terms of going from ssd to just 1hdd) as i thought 1 version of raid had massive speed benefits.
 
RAID over the HDD's won't give near SSD performance. You woudl be better selling the HDD's and then buying another SSD with the money.

I use 2 SSD's, 1 for OS, 1 for "important games" then a HDD for "non important games"
 
if youve already got the hdds....then striping them should yield a good performance increase. the large game files @ 99% read should close some of the advantage the ssd has. So three or four 7.2K drives in Raid0 should yield 6-8 TB at 300 to 600 MB/s .....
most worth it if you already have the hdd drives/raid controller and more than 1TB of game files.
 
Several SSDs in RAID 0 would give fantastic speeds and with data striped across them would give a larger drive (e.g 3 x 250gb = 750gb and much faster speed than one drive).
 
ok, potentially another dumb question incoming :D
Would i be right in thinking that 2x 512gb Msata SSD's in Raid would be rapid as?
I ask as i have the chance to pick up two drives and a Msata to Sata adapter/raid controller for less than £250 - just wondering if im better off spending more on a single larger capacity drive or these two?
 
well, another update :)
After reviewing a few sites that explain Raid, i'll be going with Raid 0 over the 2 512gb SSD's and having a backup on my 2tb drive which may actually be moved externally.
Found a great youtube video about 3 minutes long that highlights Raid 0, 1 & 10 pretty quickly lol.
0 - speed, pure speed
1 - reliability
10 - best of both 0 & 1 :)
 
You'll gain almost nothing noticeable from RAIDing SSDs in terms of performance but add the risk of total data loss if one fails/corrupts.

RAID is useful for HDDs, but not for SSDs (IMO).

  • RAID 0 combines storage capacity of both drives, reads and writes simultaneously to both yielding performance increase, but your data is at risk - if one drive fails all data is lost
  • RAID 1 mirrors the same data on both drives, leaving you with the capacity of just one drive but gaining data security from the redundancy.
  • RAID 10 (and 01) mirrors AND stripes the data. Performance and capacity will be the same from both options, but there is a difference in fault tolerance. RAID 10 requires a minimum of 4 drives (more fault tolerance), RAID 01 requires a minimum of 3 drives (less fault tolerance). Here's a good explanation: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/10/raid10-vs-raid01/
Outside of a benchmark you won't notice the difference between RAIDed SSDs and a single SSD, but you WILL notice it with HDDs.

Save your money and your data. Buy a single large SSD if that's what you need.

Samsung 840 EVO 1TB @ £324.98 = just 33p / GB!
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-171-SA&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=2394

Even the 850 PRO 1TB is just 49p / GB, and that's arguably the best large SSD you can buy right now.
 
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:)
thanks all for the feedback.
I did get a little worried when it was claimed on youtube 'Raid explained' videos where people are saying that Raid 0 is the most risky as 1 drive failing loses all data, but surely its no more risky than having 1 drive that fails??

I get the point about having not a great deal of speed difference in terms of performance when raiding ssd's, my aim i guess is to only really have 1 larger drive using raid to combine 2 drives :)
The drives i am getting are an absolute bargain and no where near the price of a normal ssd :)
 
Stalker_26 said:
:)
but surely its no more risky than having 1 drive that fails??
Click to expand...

It is because you're doubling your chance of failure. If a single drive has a 10% chance of failing in a particular year (that number is out of thin air) then a RAID 0 array will have 20% chance of failing.

Of course it makes no difference to the risk of the physical drive , it's just the data that's at greater risk.

Like I said though SSDs are pretty reliable, I've got a RAID 0 setup and don't lose any sleep.
 
Unless you need serious raw drive speed (for video editing for instance), then I'd avoid RAIDing SSDs. There's little real world speed benefit for a potentially huge headache if one drive goes **** up.

Some may disagree, but SSDs are already pretty quick :)
 
Havana_UK said:
You'll gain almost nothing noticeable from RAIDing SSDs in terms of performance but add the risk of total data loss if one fails/corrupts.
Click to expand...

+1, could not agree more with above.

For applications / programs, disk latency is normally due to random access times, and SSD's in RAID add nothing noticeable to these times.
 
Grrrrr said:
SSDs are much more reliable than HDDs though negating much of the risk...
Click to expand...

Maybe just now on recent disks, however some of the early SSD's have been pretty terrible. Main issue is when an SSD fails they tend to loose all data, HDD's you normally had some warning.

I'm an SSD advocate, think there especially good for laptops, however at least until recently don't think SSD's were as reliable as HDD's. SSD technology improving all the time, and eventually HDD's will go the way of floppy drives.

On a couple of my important computers, I run something called RAID recovery. I have an SSD as boot/apps drive, however I then have a HDD thats mirroring the SSD in background. If the SSD failed the computer would fall back to the HDD that's mirroring the SSD. It's a cheap way of ensuring little/no data loss on an SSD.
 
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if you look at the 850 pro's (yes they are stupidly expensive) they come with a 10 year Warranty which kind of shows how they rate the reliability of the newer ssd storage solution
 
Less moving parts in a ssd so that helps. one reason ssd are used in military systems.

samsungs new 850 series using older bigger nand with new tech (3d) have allowed them some neat disks.
got my 850 pro today, fast, snappy and everything works better than my old crucial m4.
 
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