Raid0 or SSD?

Devrij · 10 Oct 2010 at 13:42

Obviously, SSD is the fastest, but I'm torn between getting another cheap 500GB F3 to raid for my OS (leaving a 1TB F1 for storage) and saving money for a complete system rebuild after xmas (maybe i5/1055t); and the other option being splurging on an SSD to make the most of my current system and postponing the new build. I'm worried about the limited space for an OS drive, especially since I'd also want to run FSX with some huge scenery packages off of it (my main bottleneck atm is textures loading in FSX atm), so I'd have to go with the largest SSD I could afford, meanining it wouldn't be a C300 or anything snazzy (potentially reducing the benefits of going SSD in the first place).

What would you guys recommend? Is RAID0 much faster than a standard config or should I go the whole hog and just be very frugal with my OS drive?

sastusbulbas · 10 Oct 2010 at 13:53

I found no benefit when I 0 raided two 500gb F3's for my OS, though I seemed to get a little better HDD scoring when I used W7 software raid. I am now pondering a future upgrade with an SSD for the OS and games etc, with software raid for storage. Though not sure if it would give as much benefit within my current system as it would in a new platform.

hartty · 10 Oct 2010 at 14:00

sastusbulbas said:
I found no benefit when I 0 raided two 500gb F3's for my OS, though I seemed to get a little better HDD scoring when I used W7 software raid. I am now pondering a future upgrade with an SSD for the OS and games etc, with software raid for storage. Though not sure if it would give as much benefit within my current system as it would in a new platform.

This is what i noticed, i raided my two caviar blacks and didnt notice much gain (maybe a tiny bit snappier in windows) but anyway i decided to by an ssd (vertex 2) as a system drive and the speed was just rapid, i would advise you to bye an ssd drive, I sat on the fence for a while thinking its not worth the money but im afraid to say it is worth every penny

keng · 10 Oct 2010 at 14:01

Agree get an ssd for your boot drive

Devrij · 10 Oct 2010 at 14:31

The thing is, as much as I love the idea of a very responsive OS, I would rather spend the money upgrading my cpu (even at 4.25GHz, my E8400 is a bit of a bottleneck in some games). Primarily, the SSD would be for FSX where my HDD completely fails to load textures anywhere near as fast as I'm flying (an SSD would be perfect for all the small reads necessary here), but it would be pointless to spend that much money just for FSX so I'd also like to put my OS on there. My FSX files total to over 60GB though, so it wouldn't leave much room for other apps once my OS was on there as well.

I guess what I'm asking is does raid0 increase small read performance much or is it just better for large transfers? I'm not fussed about whether it makes my OS much faster, but if it wouldn't help me load textures faster then it would be pointless and I might as well go SSD.

Rroff · 10 Oct 2010 at 14:36

I've tested 7200.12 single drive, 7200.12 short stroked and 7200.12 in RAID0 to RAID5 in various configurations with 3-5 discs and none of them gave significant realworld difference except in manipulating large video files. However even a cheapy Patriot PS-100 SSD (I wouldn't reccomend that particular SSD tho) resulted in significantly faster OS booting and approx. 3x faster load times in 8 out of 10 games.

One thing that might be possible - tho a bit of a mess and depends a lot on the file structure of FSX - getting a cheapy 30gig or so SSD - installing the main bulk of FSX to a mechanical HDD and mapping some of the folders containing files which cause slowdowns to the SSD drive - this is how I run steam the main bulk of the install is on my mechanical RAID5 but some game folders - typically games I use the most - are mapped to individual partitions on a couple of cheap SSD drives.

cmndr_andi · 10 Oct 2010 at 14:36

Hi there,

If you are needing an fast boot disk to hold ~100GB of data (FSX, OS, commonly used apps) then I would certainly suggest going for this (one of the best SSDs for capacity per £ and the sandforce controller means it is one of the quickest around).

As you suggest, things like fast small reads are an SSD's bread and butter, plus I'm sure you will enjoy the quick boot/loading in everything else you do.

Devrij · 10 Oct 2010 at 17:03

Thanks guys, I think you've helped me make up my mind on that. SSD it is. Now I just need to decide whether to do that now or after I upgrade my cpu/mobo/ram. I think now sounds good though

Soooooooo not looking forwards to reconfiguring my install

If you are needing an fast boot disk to hold ~100GB of data (FSX, OS, commonly used apps) then I would certainly suggest going for this (one of the best SSDs for capacity per £ and the sandforce controller means it is one of the quickest around).

That SSD looks like exactly what I'm after. Might get one when I get paid on thursday, bang my OS on it, then next month (or the one after lol) get another and reinstall FSX onto that. Thanks guys, that's put away a lot of doubts I had.