RAID or SSD?

Which would be best two 7200rpm drives for 50 more or the smaller storage top of the line SSD drive at another 350 over the raid setup? This is the one area I've not gone into in either case in a pc for reliability concerns or costs-Raid 0 or SSD

 

SSD for the OS and HD for the programs and apps

 

so unless you need to boot up much your best off with HD I load alot of games and programs rarely turn my machine on and off

 

Perfect

Not really, just having some core app like ff, msn, visual studio and win 7 itself in a ssd already made my experience with my computer 300% better.

 

RAID works just fine but for REAL speed do what i said ,,,

get a 500 gig
get a 30 gig vertex

and then your set

 

oh so your saying to setup a SSD to boot the os etc and then a normal 7200 rpm drive for everything else?

 

Yes its my favorite setu and its Cheap

a 30 gig vertex will have 15 gigs for the OS and 15 gigs for programs

 

how much would it run? Any chance its available in PATA cause I have a voodoo envy i'd like to run it in might snatch one for my firebird to.

 

i think there are some on newegg for Pata i could be mistaken

I reccomend the OCZ Vertex

 

OCZ Vertex/G.skill Falcon (r basically the same lol).

 

yea i just like the name Vertex better

 

lol yeah Vertex is awesome... i eat space like there is no tomorrow so im probably gonna get 128gb ocz vertex and a 500gb 7200rpm.... btw if i get the m17x i will help with any info you need... anything really just nothing that could danger it, yes im ok with overclocking and thats the main reason for me eyeballing that qx9200...

 

lol then you will be about 50% helpful

 

it actually depends on how dangerous it is... i would probably be ok with whatever you need... like opening it up... and anything like that... nothing that will for sure brick it... im gonna need this one

 

Get a larger SSD for OS and apps and use the HDD for data files, music, and movies. ;þ

 

This is what I'm doing. I'm getting a 160GB X25-M Intel SSD if they come down in price a bit by Christmas enough for most of my stuf, and my 320 gig hard drive for movies and stuff.

The Intel X25-M SSD is pretty much the best SSD out there for performance and reliability, side by side with the Intel X25-E. However it's also very expensive. For price and performance, the OCZ Vertex is a very nice drive. For sheer performance get an Intel X25-M

 

X25-M have better non continuous read speed/write but lose on continuous... Depends in what you rly want

 

lol the vertex is not much slower and for the price difference i would suffer a little i mean come onnnnnn 220 mbs ? thats it ? I'm getting ripped off lol

 

Actually benchmarks have shown the fastest boot and game loading times come from the X25-M by quite a lead, and it improves FPS the most in games.

 

That's because X25-M got better random read speed.

And it's not going to increase your FPS (and i tested one myself lol)

 

lmao no it WILLLL NOTTTTT improve your FPS

i have a SSD and it will not improve your FPS

 

i can't tell if your joking or serious

either way it would be useless, 1 SSD would be fast enough .....and you could get a 500 gig with the other half ....

 

i was referring to the FPS comment..... no doubt a SSD will slow down ... but the reads will stay the same. The SSD will slow down very very very slow ... its quite exaggerated. I own a SSD and 5 months booting 10 times a day and then stand-by then wake up then post then edit files ETC ...no slowdown.

So I am not to worried about Slow-Downs

 

i think im gonna go with 1TB (2x 500gb 7200rpm) because its cheaper.... to me alienware's price is amazing for the 500gb 7200rpm drives... its $75... at tigerdirect and newegg its $130
EDIT: I dont think it improves fps in games but i do think it will fix popins due to faster loading times... so gta 4 might be good with them lol XD

 

That is because you are paying Upgrade prices and they also get their drives by the million which means ALOT CHEAPER

 

yea but nonetheless still the cheapest way to get it

 

SSD now is not cost effective, just get one later in life when they are cheaper, faster, and better built/supported (things like TRIM command) and you can just toss that 500gb in an external enclosure.

I wouldn't be happy with anything less than a 120gb SSD so I can put some games and stuff on there to further enjoy the speed benefits of the SSD, just my OS alone is not enough for me. Boot times are not that slow on a HDD if your setup well, and while my computer is booting, thats when I am plugging in the power cable, my mouse and things like that so its ready for me before I am ready for it.

 

lol mine booted fast but when I was loading the Game was when I did that, since i stored it on a HD

its like a glass half empty kinda thing ....I see OS boost. You see game loads boosted.

 

Yes, but the random read speed is the one that in nearly all cases really counts, not the sustained read. Plus the sustained read is still incredible.

The WRITE speeds slow down quite a bit due to the structure of NAND flash memory. It can write to 4KB pages but can only delete 512KB blocks...so it has to change the files in the block on its cache and then delete it and rewrite it (this is once it's full). However the READ speeds (the one that you will want high for loading times) is continuous and is unlike hard drives not affected by how full the SSD is.

No it isn't very cost effective, but neither are high end gaming laptops, extreme processors, the best graphics cards... The SSD is like the 'extreme processor' of hard drives. Only for those that can and are willing to pay that much money for it. As you suggest though it's likely better to wait for them to come down in price and for TRIM which decreases slowdown and increases lifetime rather than buy one now. And as you say, I'd get a 120GB or more, as you will want to put games on it as well for faster loading times and other important programs, and as games are getting bigger you're not going to fit very many on anything less than 120GB. As for music and movies and the such they don't really need to go on a SSD, next to pointless, so that's what the extra hard drive's for.

 

The cost effectiveness of any component depends of what your priorities are: If it's reliability, then the SSD would be your preferred storage medium. However, if cost/gb is of paramount importance, then SSD's are still cost prohibitive, and currently max out at 256 gb.

In addition, because speed depends on many things--drivers, OS, BIOS, etc.--they are not always necessarily faster in every case, nor are they guarantee to be less energy efficient.

 

WoW talk about beating a dead horse .....

 

Oh really? I didn't start a new thread did I?

 

No you necro'd one from a month ago.

 

Phinagle -

Do you know the brand/kind of SSD's the new M17x comes with... I want to compare to this intel SSD transfer rate...

Heard the intel SSD is clocked an average of 182MB/s.
Want to know what the average of the ones dell/alienware offer for the alienware...

thanks man

 

2 x 256GB SSDs in RAID0. Thank you.

 

its a Samsung PJxxx i can't remember exactly what Use search and Mandrake has posted it a few times its bound to come up

 

Those SSDs in the M17x were a very good deal i just couldnt see parting with an extra $800 lol for a set . I need SPACE.

 

I went with intel X25-M 80GB and a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB 7200

I was going to get a vertex untill I read a review that compared used xm-25 to vertex drives. The review of used drives (I can't find the link now) said the vertex degraded to 40% of when it was new and the Intel was much better.

 

thanks guys. you guys are always are the 1st to post. Fast speeds...

I think ill just stick to the samsungs then... The intels are sold at an outragous price

 

yea its why i went with the OCZ vertex... but there are cheaper rebrands but ...yea

 

I know the recommendation here is usually "small SSD for OS, HDD for all your games and programs", but isn't it a bit of a pain to have a small SSD for just the OS, and force every other program you install/use to utilize the HDD (Hard drive #2)?
For example, I know iTunes wants to use your "My Music" folder in "My Documents", so I would imagine you would have to force it to use another folder, and do the same for every other program?
Doesn't just about every program you install put at least something in the OS folders on C:/?
Basically what I'm asking is if I got a small SSD for just my OS, how much of a pain is it to force every other program I install to use the other HDD (Hard drive 2) by default and keep my OS drive clean, and would the OS drive eventually just fill up with junk simply from installing other programs even if done on the HDD anyway?
Right now I just have the 1 500GB drive, and was looking for an SSD but ~$700 is quite a chunk of change for a 256GB SSD (which is about how much I'm using already on my 500GB drive). It would be really nice if I could just ghost my image over to the SSD so I don't have to reinstall everything again, and then gradually move things over to the HDD as I have time.

 

I wouldn't do the small ssd + large hdd.

I would just buy either the 128 or 256 sammy drives. I don't usually keep games on my comp after I play/beat them so I don't usually fill up hard drives too much
I place all video/pics/whatever on my seperate backup drive.

Personally,I am waiting untill SSD's are cheap enough to RAID (like 2 smaller-ish ones like 2x128's). Maybe 2 128's for like $400....