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SSD's in raid, how many?

Danm54

Danm54

Danm54

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20 May 2009
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Im looking at buying another SSD, the OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB seems a fairly good choice for my budget so far. This will be for my OS

Now I have another 4 Samsung 60GB SSD's in my pc, currently 1 for OS, 1 for films etc and 2 in Raid for Steam.

So whats the best way to set up my 4 Sammy SSD's? Ive got an external drive now for films etc so I have 4 drives that I could Raid for Steam. Is this advisable or will 4 be too unstable or a high risk of failure?

Ive also not done anything with TRIM before, am I right that TRIM will work with the Sammy drives in Raid?

Thanks
 
you put films on an SSD :confused: crazy man :p

TRIM will only work for a single drive iirc, although i remember something about sandforce controllers handling it?

you'd be best off using each drive individually, and using junctions to move steam folders onto another drive from the steam installation drive. my 2 cents anyway
 
man up and 4 of them in raid0 for epic speed :)


btw no trim in raid i'm afraid but enjoy the epic speed
 
stable? maybe

risk? very high, close to insane

if one goes, you will lose everything... i don't suggest it...

If I were you and you need more storage for games I would have a 120GB for games, and the 2 other 60gb for whatever you are using them for. And sell the other 2 60gb if you don't need them.

This way you avoid raid so trim will work and ensure top performance during the lifetime of the SSD. Also what raid are you running for the 2 ssda? Is it RAID 0? Games do not benefit that much from an SSD so again a single 120GB with 250+MB read will be enough.
 
Have a sensible backup regimen and run all of em in RAID0. Samsungs are pretty reliable anyway, that's why most of the OEM's used them (Apple, Lenovo etc)
 
Just leave them as they are. With SSD's not being the most reliable thing out there you don't want to risk losing your data.

Speeds should be fast enough as they are, and if it isn't then it might be worth looking into a faster SSD rather than using them in raid 0 (I'm assuming).
 
The OCZ Revo X2 card is basically 4 SSDs in raid0 on a single PCI board anyway, so it may not be as crazy as with the same setup on a mechanical HDD array? That said, I'd never suggest raid0 to anyone unless the data is losable or has a good backup strategy (goes with all disk setups, but it's not merely suicidal to neglect this on raid0, it's like playing russian roulette with a double barrel shotgun).
 
topdog@OC said:
but it's not merely suicidal to neglect this on raid0, it's like playing russian roulette with a double barrel shotgun).
Click to expand...

Hahaha, like it! :D

It will be for Steam and Steam games so not mega important data but not what I want to be setting up every week!
Reason for more disks is space, 120gb fills up quickly with big games.

Im going to format the OS drive and try 3 in raid0, see the speeds and reliability. Cant afford another SSD just now so will give it a whirl, everything is backed up on a 1tb external drive anyway.

Cheers
:)
 
Ment to update this a while ago :p


Screeny of my raid array, this is the 3 slower sammy's

Untitled-1.png



And boot timer on the single later gen sammy. Fresh install.

Untitled2.png
 
if its just for steam and u have a good connection
then u dont really need to worry about a backup solution

as if u lose the data, all your really losing is the stuff u can redownload anyways

obviously if ur connection is slow, or limited, then u might not wanna redownload stuff
 
Cycrow said:
if its just for steam and u have a good connection
then u dont really need to worry about a backup solution

as if u lose the data, all your really losing is the stuff u can redownload anyways

obviously if ur connection is slow, or limited, then u might not wanna redownload stuff
Click to expand...

Backing up is incredibly easy, when you consider the price of mechanical drives and the average size of SSD's it's stupid not to. Most people (who frequent these forums at least) will have spare mechanical drives anyway, and Windows has a decent backup system built in (though personally I use Acronis)
Put a spare drive in your comp, spend 5 minutes setting up a regularly scheduled backup and then forget about it until you need it. If you have a NAS, back up to there too.

It's the first thing I do after finishing a build nowadays.

By the way, I built a machine for a friend almost 2 years ago now (Jun 2009) with a RAID array of 3x 90/70MB/s Samsungs. Here were my benchmark results:

ssdbench.jpg

ssdatto.jpg


2 years later and the array is still working great, no noticable drop in speed either. On a side note, that build was the fastest booting one I've seen - boottimer wasn't out, but i used a stopwatch and it was 7 seconds from the start of the windows boot animation to a usable desktop (Windows 7)
 
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Ive got a single sammy for OS so its a bit slower than the raid, not by much though.

This is the bench of the single drive

Untitled1-1.png



Ive got a 1tb external drive so ill set a backup to that, not too much of an issue downloading stuff though.
 
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