Question on multiple hard drives and SSD's

OK, a pretty stupid question I imagine - but I'm in the process of trying to educate myself a bit, and the best way to do that is to ask...

On the subject of hard drives - if I get a computer with a multiple hard drive arrangement (a RAID 0 setup, offered as a performance option on several alienware computers):

1) Will the drives be separate as far as the computer is concerned - that is, a C: drive and a D: drive? I had a setup like this on my old HP desktop a while ago, and for some reason it really annoyed me. Should it annoy me, or am I just being silly about it?

2) Performance wise, what is the advantage of a RAID 0 setup? I think I understand the difference between performance in the raid 0 vs security in the raid 1 (with essentially two copies of the data), but I don't completely understand why a raid 0 setup gives greater performance. Is it enough of a boost to try for?

The reason I ask is I am considering upgrading the 320G/7200 RPM harddrive in my newly-ordered system to either a 256G solid state drive, or maybe a raid 0 setup. (The solid state drives appeal to me for speed and lack of heat - but I'll cheerfully take any thoughts on if they're worth it!)

Oh, and I know that the folks here who are more tech-savvy than I will say just get the computer, get the drives from NewEgg, and do it myself - but i'd like to avoid this if possible. I know it's relatively simple, and I've seen the directions - but I don't want the first time I play with the guts of my laptop to be with my brand new expensive gaming rig... So, consider me informed as to 'It's cheaper to do it myself'.. I know it is, I just would really rather not!

 

RAID 0 is basically the computer reads and writes to both drives at the same time, so reads can essentially be up to twice as fast.

With RAID 0 you can have one big c: drive which will be the size of both drives added together, if you want to set it up that way.

 

Gotcha - that was the piece I was missing; i thought the computer still read the drives essentially one at a time, so I couldn't see how that would boost performance. Simultaneously, ok, I can see that would help...

Still, it seems to me that some of my concerns (heat and power, particularly) would be doubled as well from two drives running together. So, is it worth it?

Oh, and you said if I set it up that way. If I order an alienware system with a raid 0 setup, does anyone happen to know if they come as one big C drive, or do I have to adjust it to be this way if that's what I want?

PS: namaiki, i see your current mood is "quite irritated" - surely it;'s not just because of my stupid question...

 

It depends on what you want to do? I use my M17 as a desktopreplacement so I don't care about "beterylife" ...

The only "problem" is, the datas are splitted ... on each HDD is a part so when one stops working you loos everything

I think for a gaming labtop it's a nice to have! 3DMark06 likes Raid0 ... but you won't see mutch improfements in games (only lodingtimes decreas).

Greetings
julian

PS: I guess AW will give you one big C (and a D with the backup)

 

nah, lately I'm always irritated.. >_>

 

Yeah - I guess I wrote 'power and heat', but truthfully heat is my concern, and I thought the SSD's might help. It's a desktop replacement gaming laptop (99% for games, I'd say!) so performance is a primary concern.

So, I'm thinking one 256G SSD in place of the 320G/7200 HDD? My understanding is that won't change game performance as much as decrease load times - is this correct, or will it also boost gaming performance?

My other thought is no need to go for the raid 0 setup with the SSD's (say, a pair of 128's instead of the 256. I'd love the 2x256, for 512G, but that's another $1000, and not sure that's worth it...) Anyway, am I wrong - would two SSD's in a raid setup be worth it?

 

IMHO yes,
When my M9750 was brand new it already had two HDD in raid 0. I installed two OCZ (slc) drives and couldn't believe the difference. It felt like a whole new machine. Boot up and shut down is much faster and everything just felt faster. As mentioned before, you won't notice a difference while gaming but you will notice a difference elsewhere.

I noticed a huge difference with "old" tech SSD's. The new OCZ "vertex" series SSD's have far better read and write times than what I have.

Changing hard drives is about as easy as it gets. But if you don't want to do it, pay someone to do it. You will save money by not getting them from A.W., you won't void the warranty replacing the Hdd's, you'll save on power and heat, and have a much more durable data storage system without the worry of drive failure. Also which never get's mentioned is the fact that SSD's are super light compared to Hdd's.

Rob41

 

Hmmm..... well, tempting. Assuming I do go that route (upgrade the drives myself), I assume the recommendation would be to get one (or a pair, depending on if I want to use dual drives) of whatever is cheapest on AW, then order the drives separately?

I guess, to make the question clearer, the drives are all of similar sizes, designed to fit into the drive bays?

Oh, and one question remains - is there a significant reason to run a raid 0 setup with the SSD's, or are the read/write times fast enough to make the data striping unnecessary?

 

Yeah,
running SSD's in Raid 0 further increases their speed ie. faster boot times and read /write speeds. And remember, in Raid 0 your capacity is the total size of both drives combined.