SSD or raid array

bigjimmyauk · 5 Feb 2010 at 02:50

really need to move on from the depressing 80GB sata drive your thoughts please

which would be the better option for gaming

my mobo can handle setting up raid arrays for me (something i've never done)
or would i be better off with a SSD

If you think raid would be the better option which raid and how many drives would be a start so i can look into it(got the impression from google raid 0 is a big no no please correct me if i'm wrong)

budget would be about £200 for either of the above items

IdhDec · 5 Feb 2010 at 05:08

I think this would be better off in the Hard Drive section

however Raid0 will increase performance but increases the risk of losing data - The more drives you have in raid0 the better performance however data is split between the drives so if one of the drives fails you lose all of the data.

I would say that SSDs are the way to go - with your budget you could have an SSD for your OS and a few games and a regular HD for storage.

For a single SSD I would reccomend the Intel X25-V 40gb for your OS drive due to trim support and a Samsung F1 for storage - Plenty if change left over from £200.

Alternatively for £200 you could have two Kingston 40gb SSDs in raid0 (which will give you 80gb and better performance than the popular X25-M 80gb) and a Samsung F1 500gb for storage.

Option 3 - £200 will get you a single X25-M (this is regarded as the best drive for your budget atm) if you want to go the SSD route but not risk your data with raid0.

bigjimmyauk · 5 Feb 2010 at 07:34

Thanks for the advice exactly what is trim support?

how bad is raid 0 i usually back up all my photos to a dvd once a week or so to keep the main drive free of space anyway, so are the chances of failure higher than a stand alone HDD like the one i have now?

does this support trim ? Intel X25-M Mainstream 80GB

mothermachine · 5 Feb 2010 at 07:52

i was under the impression TRIM doesn't yet support RAID... therefore if you want RAID you have to go mechanical. as far as I'm aware anyway.

IdhDec · 5 Feb 2010 at 08:21

The chances of failure is higher with RAID0 as if one drive fails data is lost. The chances of losing your data is higher as you have two drives so failure of a drive is twice as likely.

Basically due to the way blocks are deleted an SSDs performance can degrade over time. TRIM restores performance.

The X25-V and X25-M support TRIM. The Intel V's are basically rebranded Kingston 40gbs. The Kingstons are cheaper however they do not support TRIM out of the box. I have read that you can update the Kingston drives with X25-V firmware that allows TRIM.

TRIM does not work with SSDs in RAID0 however you can still RAID SSDs for better performance.