SSD vs RAID0

So, my replacement R3 is coming with and extra HDD, setup as RAID0 out of the factory.

How does the RAID0 compare performance wise to a SSD?

 

i'd rather have SSD than raid0, although raid0 is basically going to be the closest you can get.

you just cant justify "digital"(SSD) memory to "mechanical"(HDD) memory. the read/write times will be better from the digital.

 

Raid 0 pros:
-More storage space.
-Fast (but still slower than a single ssd)

Raid 0 cons:
-If one HDD breaks, you will lose all your data.
-Much slower random seek than ssd

SSD Pros:
Faster than raid 0. Random seek has superior speed
Does not have moving parts.

SSD Cons:
Expensive price per GB
Limited amout of write sessions per cell.

 

What does this mean. Big of a newb here

 

Great question. Hoping for an answer myself. If each cell can only be written to a certain number of times, how many is that? I mean if it's 100, I might wanna go HDD. If it's 100,000-then SSD should be ok. But after you reach the 'limit', does the SSD quit functioning? Can you no longer write data to the sector/drive? So which drive has the longer life? Guess that would be user specific though. Questions, questions, questions!!!

 

Going from memory here, and one that is dead tired after having been up for the past thirty hours, but essentially flash memory (SSD's, USB thumb drives, SD cards, etc) are limited in the number of read\write operations each cell\sector can undertake before it starts, for lack of a better word, to die.

It is not a solid number but they are generally rated for a certain number of read\write operations before any such data degradation starts to occur. Also modern SSD "hard" drives contain a controlling algorithm that is supposed to spread the read\write operations out across all cells\sectors in a attempt to maximize complete SSD life before any such degradation occurs.

Basically the number of read\write operations is in the millions I think and an SSD should last 2+ years without any need to worry about it.

Any ways as I said that is all from memory so I might be off some but that should be the jist of it.

 

Well, what about the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid? How does that compare?

 

Most SSDs are rated for 10,000 read/write cycles per cell, this is more than most of us will need. Although HDDs are one of the few PC components that can be passed on from one generation PC to another without a noticable drop in performance, most of us will have moved on to another HDD/SSD before your SSD wears out. Another spec is that they are rated for 1-2 million hours of use, which you'll never get to. It is much more likely your SSD will break from something else (controller failure, defective etc) than wear out. Also they all have 3 year warranties. If you are a SSD user, you probably qualify as a power user/techie/nerd/whatever, so you'll be using something else in 3 years anyway. In short, read/write cycles isn't an issue for most users.

I don't know much about the Hybrid drives. It is a compromise. Personally if your laptop has 2 HDD bays, you should get an SSD for OS&games, and a HDD for media storage. A hybrid is good compromise if you only have 1 bay (like a m14) and can't fit all your stuff on 120GB SSD.

 

There's always the 250 gigs. =p

 

IRRC the new WD 500/750gb black drives are faster than the seagate hybrid drives...

 

For those of you wondering how long your SSD will last, well it depends. It is rather very complicated question so I'm not going to get into a lot of details the answer deserves.

As far as I know the most recent drives use smaller nand 25nm, rated at 3000 erase cycles (OCZ Vertex 2, Vertex 3). The older drives like old OCZ Vertex used 34nm, rated at 5000 erase cycles.

Now rating means that basically what you should expect out of nand on average, it might last much longer, or shorter. That's why drives are over provisioned so any bad blocks will get swapped out by the ones set aside for such an event.

How fast you burn through these erase/write cycles depends how your drive is used. For example if your drive is experiencing a lot of small writes you might not write a lot of data but you will burn a lot of cycles (write amplification). That's because MLC nand writes a page at a time. If you create a file 1 byte long it will write 512k because that's the smallest unit the drives operates on.

There are things you can do to maximize your SSD drive life. If you have SSD, HDD combination and your SSD is your boot drive, then you need to configure your Windows in such a way that minimises writes. Turn off swap file, disable indexing, disable defrag, turn off hibernation, relocate logs etc. You can also move temp folders and anything else that seems to be writing to your SSD to HDD by using junction links. Use process monitor app to see what's writing to your SSD when your system is idling ( you're logged in but doing nothing ). I can tell you for example that my Kaspersky Anti-Virus writes like mad to the drive. Before I moved the folder it was writing to, it burned like 100 cycles on my drive in about 24Hrs of system up time.

Anyway, if you use your system couple of hours a day, you drive should last 1 year if you don't do anything. If you minimize the writes, especially the ones that happen if you're not going anything, it will last much much loner. If you leave your system on 24HRs then your drive may die much sooner.

BTW, I have optimized my system pretty well and it still goes through 1 erase/write cycle on entire drive in 2 hours. This is most likely due to the fact that Windows 7 still has to write to the dive even if you don't do anything. Background apps/services write to the registry which is located on the drive, drive allocation tables and things like that which do not show as regular write. Also wear leveling will move stuff around weather you want to or not using up cycles. So if my drive is rated at 5000 cycles and I go through 1 cycle every 2 hours while just being logged in doing nothing, it means my drive will last 416 days of nonstop operation or less. This will be of course much less because I would like to use my system for other thing then sitting idle

Anyway if you ask me if you should get an SSD, by all means do. Just make sure you backup your stuff religiously once a week and be prepared to have to replace it some time in the future. It is by far best upgrade for a modern PC and I highly recommend it.

Ohh, and I have used Raid 0 in the past, couple of setups. I had very unreliable experience. The Raid 0 can break not only when one of the drives fails but if one drive encounters an error/hiccup that is recoverable but the drives take a bit longer then the controller deems appropriate, it will break the raid 0 even though the drive is just fine. And you will loose all data. From my experience SSD drive is much more reliable. Now you can back up your drive, but backing up 1.5TB drive proves rather problematic if you know what I mean.