SSD Worth The Money?

citycm

citycm

citycm

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I have just built a computer (Q6600 based) and put 3 x 500GB Hard Drives in it. However, the system isn't as fast as I'd expected (even overclocked to 3.5Ghz and I suspect my hard drives are slowing it down.

Would it be worth buying an SSD for OS and Applications or would I be better getting a Western Digital Raptor or something similar?

Thanks in advance
 
TaKeN said:
What hard disks are you using? how are they setup?
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I thought they were WD drives but they're Maxtor SATA drives - not sure of the model numbers cuz don't really want to take them out of the case. They're just set up as 3 seperate SATA drives. Decided not to RAID them as had problems last time I did that with 2 Raptors.
 
You wont notice any performance gains unless you RAID them, or move your page file etc..

Get them RAID'd, foo'. Best bet is buy one more identical drive and RAID 10 them.
 
sixty said:
You wont notice any performance gains unless you RAID them, or move your page file etc..
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+1 This

Ninja Please! said:
I have a single ssd and I bet it will beat two velociraptors in raid0 no prob.
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And +1 this too. SSD's are def worth it imo, but at the end of the day it all depends on what you are going to use your rig for and how much you can afford.
 
Sorry, I think I confused you - My current hard drives are just standard Maxtor drives. I was saying that I previously had 2 Raptors which I Raid'd but started having problems with my computer constantly rebooting itself so decided not to Raid these Maxtors.
 
sixty said:
You wont notice any performance gains unless you RAID them, or move your page file etc..

Get them RAID'd, foo'. Best bet is buy one more identical drive and RAID 10 them.
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What's the difference between RAID 0 and RAID 10?
 
Ok, so is my understanding right? RAID 10 spreads data across mulitple discs to increase the speed but also creates a backup onto another disc?

Sorry if I'm wrong but the RAID 10 description on Wiki isn't easy to understand (for me anyway)
 
Here's some info from further down the wiki page regarding Nested RAID Arrays:

"Many storage controllers allow RAID levels to be nested: the elements of a RAID may be either individual disks or RAIDs themselves. Nesting more than two deep is unusual.

As there is no basic RAID level numbered larger than 10, nested RAIDs are usually unambiguously described by concatenating the numbers indicating the RAID levels, sometimes with a "+" in between. For example, RAID 10 (or RAID 1+0) consists of several level 1 arrays of physical drives, each of which is one of the "drives" of a level 0 array striped over the level 1 arrays. It is not called RAID 01, to avoid confusion with RAID 1, or indeed, RAID 01. When the top array is a RAID 0 (such as in RAID 10 and RAID 50) most vendors omit the "+", though RAID 5+0 is clearer.

RAID 0+1: striped sets in a mirrored set (minimum four disks; even number of disks) provides fault tolerance and improved performance but increases complexity. The key difference from RAID 1+0 is that RAID 0+1 creates a second striped set to mirror a primary striped set. The array continues to operate with one or more drives failed in the same mirror set, but if drives fail on both sides of the mirror the data on the RAID system is lost.

RAID 1+0: mirrored sets in a striped set (minimum four disks; even number of disks) provides fault tolerance and improved performance but increases complexity. The key difference from RAID 0+1 is that RAID 1+0 creates a striped set from a series of mirrored drives. In a failed disk situation, RAID 1+0 performs better because all the remaining disks continue to be used. The array can sustain multiple drive losses so long as no mirror loses all its drives."
 
If you were to raid0 2 disks, the pc will recognize them as one disk and write pieces of the file on each drive so that way when you go to access the file it can pull separate parts from separate drives and deliver the information faster.

Raid 10 (or 0+1) is basically going to add a third drive to our senario and copy the information from our raid0 array (remember that's 2 drives acting as one) and copy all that data to the third drive (just one single drive that has the same or more hd space as your 2 raid0 drives combined.) the purpose of that third drive is redundancy, or in other words, backup of the files on your 2 raid0 drives because in a raid0 setup, if one drive fails, you lose all of your data.

Edit: one thing to remember when raiding is scaling. Basically, 2 drives that have read speeds of 100mb/s when raided will not give you 200mb/s. It may be more like 150mb/s.

Faceplant's raid0 setup with the ssd vertex's is insane btw :D
 
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FaceplantSi said:
Why thank you Ninja!;)

My i7 bits were delivered to my offices this afternoon - about an hour after I left work... d'oh! Still, that's my weekend sorted - also got Win7 to go on, looking forward to it!:D
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You will love the i7. TBH the best thing about the platform are the motherboards if you ask me. sli/crossfire, you decide and all the i7 boards are top notch. ddr3, triple channel, qpi, I mean what's not to love?
 
Ninja Please! said:
You will love the i7. TBH the best thing about the platform are the motherboards if you ask me. sli/crossfire, you decide and all the i7 boards are top notch. ddr3, triple channel, qpi, I mean what's not to love?
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Cool, cheers m8. I may ask for your help when it comes to clocking it!:D
 
No problem. They are really easy to OC. Infact just a couple of post's down on the "official i7 overclocking thread" - which gets ignored far too much, there's a link that is very useful. Most people who have i7 and 1600mhz ram are underclocking their ram, but this post shows how to keep your clock speed and get the most out of your ram. They use a gigabyte board though.

btw what are your i7 specs?
 
I've gone for the Gigabyte UD5, 920 D0, 6Gb OCZ Blade 2000MHz, and Titan Fenrir (also have Noctua NH-U12 if needed) - thanks for the heads up I'll take a look at that post.

Oh, and sorry for the thread hijack OP!
 
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