SSD n00b advice

chipachap · 4 Apr 2012 at 22:03

I was looking at the SSD Raid packs when they were on special, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-111-OC this pack in particular. Was about to get one yesterday eve but they were gone when I checked :-/

Are the prices of these inflated since the big HD floods last year? Or are they normal since they are made with different components? I will be keeping an eye out for when they come back in.

I've read a lot about failures and lots of software/conflicts with various SSD's so I'm assuming in RAID 0 there would be a lot more problems than one and even more than if there was none, or do they have all the bugs generally ironed out?

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with SSD's in RAID or these SSD's inparticular also, thanks for your input.

ChileanLlama · 5 Apr 2012 at 08:03

Prices are not affected by the floods, if anything they've come down in price during that period.

I've no particular experience with that drive, but I have been running various SSD's in RAID0 for a number of years. There's the obvious risk that if one drive fails you lose everything.

The only other downside is that TRIM isn't supported. For normal to heavy use that would mean you'd start seeing degradation in performance after about 12 months (my last one lasted me 14 months and I regularly edited video or ripped BDs to the desktop!), and you'd need to manually clean the drives - breaking the array - and either requiring a clean install and all that entails, or cloning the drive and restoring it after the clean (takes about an hour).

But overall you won't really notice a speed improvement over a single drive if it's going to be mainly for OS and apps/games, so I'd recommend spending about the same amount and going for a single drive.

Edit: Agility 3 120GB is £103.99 vs £121.97 for 2x60GB

Doomedspeed · 5 Apr 2012 at 08:35

Like said, I on't think you'll see much improvment when RAIDed. A single bigger drive will be better, normally they are a little fasters anyway.

I suggest the M4's as many people have had problems with the driver which OCZ and Corsair use.

chipachap · 5 Apr 2012 at 11:43

ChileanLlama said:
Prices are not affected by the floods, if anything they've come down in price during that period.

I've no particular experience with that drive, but I have been running various SSD's in RAID0 for a number of years. There's the obvious risk that if one drive fails you lose everything.

The only other downside is that TRIM isn't supported. For normal to heavy use that would mean you'd start seeing degradation in performance after about 12 months (my last one lasted me 14 months and I regularly edited video or ripped BDs to the desktop!), and you'd need to manually clean the drives - breaking the array - and either requiring a clean install and all that entails, or cloning the drive and restoring it after the clean (takes about an hour).

But overall you won't really notice a speed improvement over a single drive if it's going to be mainly for OS and apps/games, so I'd recommend spending about the same amount and going for a single drive.

Edit: Agility 3 120GB is £103.99 vs £121.97 for 2x60GB

Wow that would be some kick in the teeth! It is mainly for gaming but I do a lot of college stuff on it aswell so the added speed of one seems like a benefit for starting up and loading games. Changing it out after 14 months definitely wouldn't suit me!

I've read good things about the M4 so I'll probably budget for one of them. I imagined they'd have fixed the driver problem but I'm not being a guinea pig!

Thanks for the advice lads.