SSD vs Raid 0

I have a 80gb ssd to put in my new 17xr2. It's coming with a 500gb 7200rpm drive. I started thinking maybe I should just get another 500gb drive and go raid 0.

How much fast would the ssd be bs that set up? Would I notice that much of a difference?

Normally I would only put the OS and a game or two on the ssd.

Also what kind of drive is the 500gb? Does it matter if I get a different brand ad long as the specs match?

Sorry for all the questions in the same thread.

Thanks in advance.

 

man, this has been beaten to death. Raid 0 is fast, SSD is WAYYYYYY fast...

Brand doesn't matter. The RAID 0 will only run as fast as the slower of the two drives.

You may want to just pick up a small SSD as your main drive and leave the 500gb drive as your data drive. That would be your ideal set up and you will see speeds faster than a raid 0.

You can get a 128gig SSD right now for about $250... choice is yours

 

I'd recommend SSD any time of the day. It's probably the most significant(or should I say efficient? ) upgrade one could ever notice.

If you choose to go raid:

You can raid two drives of different brands, but it is recommended you get an identical pair. Only god knows what your new drive will be. Could be Seagate or Toshiba or even WD. The best solution would be to wait and see what you get first.

 

Oles go with your SSD chiefs. Don't bother with RAID 0. SSDs will smash the RAID 0.

Normally for RAID 0 you just need the same sized hard drive like the other peeps have said. However it is best and normally recommended to have the exact same drive, specs and speed hard drive to that it all runs better.

However the SSD for the OS and couple of games + Larger Secondary hard drive combo would be the best way chiefs.

Cheers.

 

I agree with everyone else here. SSD for your C Drive and a 500 GB as your D Drive and you will be smiling Much faster than two conventional drives in RAID 0.

Also go for the biggest SSD you can afford. If you are careful with the programs you load on your C Drive 80 GD will be fine. I can recommend the Intel X-25M drives but seriously any modern SSD will be okay.

 

1.toss your 500GB out of the window and predent you did that not on purpose.
2.buy two SSDs.
3. Go RAID 0.
4.thank me

 

A word of warning about SSD's in RAID0. At the moment SSD's in RAID0 cannot use Garbage Collection or TRIM and I would suggest that before you decide to RAID two SSD's you read up on it. It will be fast but it will slow down later.

I originally had two X-25M 160GB SSD's in this computer and it was quick.... really quick....... at first. Six months later I needed more HD space so I broke up the RAID array and fitted a 500GB HD as the D Drive. I could hardly notice the difference in my boot times comparing the old 'dirty' array to the clean single SSD.

I still recommend a combination of SSD for speed and standard HD for space.

 

ssd boot and 500 alt drive it is..

Thanks guy!

 

Yes! Agreed. My M17x raid 0 setup is fast when installing or copying files. But crawls when i want to read smaller images in a folder. Opening a small Word doc takes ages (relatively).

I've gone with single fast HDD for my new Workstation. Is faster for everyday use. Secondary HDD as back up only.

 

One minor thing to keep in mind... you don't want to fill your 80G SSD boot drive too much or performance will suffer. Try to stay under 70% used space if you can.

I assume that you have an Intel drive (not sure if any others sell an 80G capacity drive). If it says "G2" in the model number then you will be fine... TRIM will keep it running healthy. If it says "G1" in the model number though you will want to plan on doing a regular secure erase (backup/clone the drive first!) to prevent gradual performance degradation that happens on those older drives.

Also, as a reminder... if you run defrag software, do NOT run it on the SSD as it will just reduce the lifespan on it without any performance gain. Feel free to defrag the 500G HDD, just don't enable defrag on the SSD.

 

raid 0 with garbage collection should work if you have a sandforce controller drive. You can have GC kick in by suspending the computer and resume and keep the computer at the login screen for 30min to 1 hours. Something you can do overnight when you notice slow downs.

Support Question Garbage Collection for SSD in raid 0?

Problem with Garbage Collection (GC) on OCZ Vertex Raid 0 SSD

 

2x 256 GB SSD in Raid 0........MMMMMMMMMMM

 

OK OK ... I stand corected.....seems Raid 0 in SSD is not good......Get a good SSD for OS and then the biggest Sata Optical drive for Storage