Ssd Raid

DataVampire

DataVampire

DataVampire

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After just buying the wife a new ssd. I am getting the itch to buy myself some new ssds.

So looking at buying x2 ssds to run in raid.(raid 0)I presume raid 0 would be good for a os drive raid with also the odd steam game on ?

I have been looking at the following 2 combinations

x2 Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-167-SA

or

x2 Samsung 120GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E120BW/EU

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-190-SA

I would be running them off my mobo(which I believe or hope would be good enough)

So my finger is on the buy button guys which combination would you get and why.

Oh before I forget the main uses of the raid would be my main os and 1-2 steam games or possibly just my os drive and use the m4 250gb ssd for steam.

Anyhow I would be great full for the advice
 
RAID 0 means you'll get pretty much double performance but it's unlikely you'll notice it in real world use. It also means you'll double the chance of something going wrong but SSDs generally seem to be pretty reliable - certainly more so than spinners. So it boils down to your personal preference.

To answer your question RAID 0 SSDs will be fine as your OS drive.
 
Why are people so obsessed with raiding ssd's, it seems largely pointless to me. Maximum read/write speeds are only really relevant if you're transferring to an equally fast drive. 4k random read/write are what matters.
 
Benefits for me

Quick ass boot times ... 4 or so seconds on a fresh install , might be better if I had better drives. Quick asset acsess for uber large folders , super quick load times for games ( beat someone into the game for better equipment etc. ) many more proffessional reasons also

Only problem is redundancy on raid 0 , lost a **** ton of baby photos my wife will never get back because I was to lazy to back up to my NAS with redundancy . Just got to decide if your willing to loose information should something go wrong , make sure you regularly back up or keep sensitive data off that array
 
BlackAle said:
Why are people so obsessed with raiding ssd's, it seems largely pointless to me. Maximum read/write speeds are only really relevant if you're transferring to an equally fast drive. 4k random read/write are what matters.
Click to expand...

Because all of the reviews I have seen on you tube, all recommend setting up a raid for the 850s at least. apparently you gain a 15-20% performance increase.

I mean I am no expert but surely the performance is worth it, and running raid 0 on ssds I think/feel is not so bad nowadays because of the failure rate, seeing as there is no moving parts ?.

And since as I put in mu op. it will be a main drive os, with a few steam games. surely I am making the most/best of it ?

thank you for yoru reply though
 
BlackAle said:
Why are people so obsessed with raiding ssd's, it seems largely pointless to me. Maximum read/write speeds are only really relevant if you're transferring to an equally fast drive. 4k random read/write are what matters.
Click to expand...

With the price I paid for my SSDs, getting smaller ones and putting them in RAID was by far the better solution.

I ended up getting 4x 256GB SSDs (2x Sandisk Ultra Plus, 2 Crucial MX 100s) for around £200 all in (brand new), so it makes sense to RAID 2 lots of them so I have 2x 512GB volumes with nice fast reads and writes.
 
MasterOC said:
Benefits for me

Quick ass boot times ... 4 or so seconds on a fresh install , might be better if I had better drives. Quick asset acsess for uber large folders , super quick load times for games ( beat someone into the game for better equipment etc. ) many more proffessional reasons also

Only problem is redundancy on raid 0 , lost a **** ton of baby photos my wife will never get back because I was to lazy to back up to my NAS with redundancy . Just got to decide if your willing to loose information should something go wrong , make sure you regularly back up or keep sensitive data off that array
Click to expand...

Redundancy isn't backup.

RAID won't improve access times much on SSD, I also doubt it improves boot / load times much.
 
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Agree on the access times, I've read somewhere that SSDs in RAID have higher latency than single SSDs. If true, as the main benefit to me of an OS SSD is access times and 4k random read/write (rather then sequential), I think I would rather have a single fast SSD.
RAID does help though if you want a number of smaller drives to appear as one.
 
Yeah if I owned two identical SSDs I'd avoid RAID 0, for performance reasons as much as for data safety.

If buying new I'd certainly avoid two small* SSDs as most of them are significantly slower than their larger siblings due to not having all channels in use, so you'd lose out on access times and not really gain in sequential throughput either, making them just plain worse & slightly more expensive too.

*small varies by model, as it depends how big it needs to be to be operating on all channels. Normally by 256GB all is fine, 120GB is significantly slower, but not always.
 
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