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    2x 60gb ssd (raid 0) vs 120 gb ssd.

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by raymondjchin, Feb 20, 2012.

  1. raymondjchin

    raymondjchin Notebook Consultant

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    probably should go raid 0 right? its 2x faster as if ssd single isn't fast enough lol?
     
    raymondjchin, Feb 20, 2012
    #1
  2. Ryan

    Ryan NBR Moderator

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    RAID only increases sequential writes/reads.

    Practically no change in 4K or access times.

    I'd go with 120GB SSD. There is no reason to go for RAID 0 and lose TRIM, when there are practically no uses with the improved sequential speeds for everyday use.
     
    Ryan, Feb 20, 2012
    #2
  3. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    It depends. What is your backup strategy?

    You have two issues at hand:

    1) a RAID-0 volume split over two drives almost doubles your risk of something bad happening and you lose data for the entire RAID volume. Note, you lose everything with one drive as well (so ppl should be backing up), but there is no denying a two drive RAID-0 array mathematically almost doubles the chance of catastrophe.

    2) Since (at the time of this post - using RTM based drivers) no drivers support TRIM within RAID, if you make enough deletes and do not let the array sit idle long enough so each drive can run a garbage collection (GC) routine, a RAID-0 volume may end up performing worse than a single drive. The only option then is to backup, securely erase both SSDs, and then re-image the volume or let your machine sit idle long enough and *hope* the GC routines are run.

    HTH
     
    jclausius, Feb 20, 2012
    #3
  4. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    As mentioned, stay away from raid0 on SSD's. That is unless you are doing so severe IO on the HDD's. Unless you are running a heavy file server I doubt you would fall under this usage..........
     
    TANWare, Feb 21, 2012
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  5. saturnotaku

    saturnotaku Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Single SSD for the OS and applications, traditional hard drive for data/media/game storage. Period. Paragraph.
     
    saturnotaku, Feb 21, 2012
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  6. Yuxi

    Yuxi Notebook Consultant

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    Also, 120GB SSDs are usually faster than 60GB SSDs, so you'd get a lot of the additional speed from the single 120GB anyway that the downsides (see previous posts) more than likely outweigh any additional performance you'd get.
     
    Yuxi, Feb 21, 2012
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  7. JRS

    JRS Notebook Guru

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    Nope. Most SSD Raid0 vs non-Raid0 comparisons I've seen have, for example, Windows boot time improving by one second. Not quite "2x faster". If SSD performance is really what you are looking for, get into the ~256gb or bigger SSD size before bothering with SSD Raid0... and I second all the previous replies.
     
    JRS, Feb 21, 2012
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  8. ivan_cro

    ivan_cro Notebook Consultant

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    here you can see what it would look like.

    Depending on the drives you get, you would get faster or slower results, however, it would be same ratio. What this means is if you need really high sequential reads, or plan to work with very high queue depths you would profit from raid0, but if you're going to use ssd for home purposes you won't get almost any improvement from such high sequential reads, as others already stated.

    And if what you require is very high sequential write, get new seagate or hitachi hdd's and raid0 them, they have ~200MBps transfer rates, which is insane when looking at MBps/$
     
    ivan_cro, Feb 21, 2012
    #8