Best 2 SSDs for RAID0?

Edit:
Merely when it comes to performance (in general,) which is the best SSD for RAID0? C300 64GB or Vertex 2 60GB?

my notebook only has SATA II controllers.

 

You can't RAID any drives unless they are of the same capacity,

and with one fast and one slower, the RAID array will follow the slower drive's speed.

 

I wasn't specific. I just have edited the post.

 

Getting an SSD and a momentus XT wouldn't really make sense. The NAND of the Momentus XT is only really an advantage when it is used as a boot drive, since it primarily speeds up startup time and responsiveness of commonly used programs. If you have the OS on an SSD you would use the momentus XT for data storage, the performance of which the integrated SSD memory would not improve.

 

From what I know, Raid0 does not improve 4K speeds.

These are the speeds that are truly important, I highly doubt you will notice a speed bump from 280MB/s to 400MB/s sequential, because there is hardly an occasion in which you will need these.

I would go with the 60GB SSD + 320GB to 500GB HDD for storage, it would plenty fast

 

That's what I wanted to really know. Thank you.

Now, which 2 SSDs should I get?

Vertex 2 60GB, $114.99 each
Or
Agility 2 60GB, $129.99 each
Or something else?


@meraki1990
I don't know... lol... I need the money but I just wanna have that super experience!
You say it won't matter two much, ummmm.... I don't know.... I'm trying to find a scenario in which I will use 400MB/s , some heavy programs loading and that's it I think. I still will do it

 

Why are you still getting two SSDs?

 

For any speed boost

1) Faster windows boot up time
1) Less-lagy VMware
2) Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and After Effects (not that I really do that much AE, only occasionally)
3) For good responsiveness when 1000 (by 1000 I mean so ****in many) applications are open together. I don't turn off my PC, and I really really hate to turn off programs, I like to have everything I may need open. Browsers, Folders, Messengers, etc... I don't open VMware as my laptop can't really handle it's state now, let alone opening VMware.


Does getting 2 SSDs really help in these scenarios?
I don't do gaming by the way. Rarely I would say.

 

I notice you put two 1)s there..

Yes, faster windows bootup time.
No, not less-laggy VMware, it is up to your RAM and CPU.
No, not really, unless you are constantly saving and opening new files.
No, responsiveness is based on CPU and RAM.

 

LOL that made me laugh.

 

How many times do you boot your computer up daily anyways? Either way, tThe difference in boot times between a single SSD and two SSDs in RAID0 can vary greatly, especially in desktops, but on notebooks, you won't notice a difference since the integrated controllers can't keep up and won't increase random speeds (which is the main determinant of your boot time).

 

I will be having 8GB DDR3 RAM and Sandy Bridge core i7 2.0GHz. (The laptop is on it's way.)

I think when opening a lot of programs (including VMware) there happens a lot of swapping between the RAMs and the SSDs.
Typical DDR3 RAMs transfer rates are maybe 20x faster than that of a typical SSD.

That's why I thought having more speedy transfer rate would be beneficial.

Please correct me where I'm wrong.


EDIT: Actually the only time my current laptop boot ups is when it accidentally turns off (I have a weird laptop with a weird battery and a weird power adapter.)

 

Edit: nevermind, I thought it was something else.

 

Is the Crucial C300 better than the vertex 2 in general?
Are 2 Crucial C300 RAID0 better than 2 vertex 2 RAID0?

I found the Crucial C300 for cheaper price than the vertex 2

The notebook only supports SATA II

 

With Crucial C300 SSDs it all depends on the capacity (256GB is faster than 128GB, which is faster than 64GB) and You need SATA3 controller to fully utilize their potential.

I would go with Vertex 2.

 

Thank you

 

I would definitely not recommend a Vertex2 for a RAID0 setup.

Look into the Samsung 470 series or even the Kingston V+100 series (they seem to have good GC which is what you need for the currently untrimmable RAID drivers).

With the Kingston's though, be sure to throw your battery expectations out the window though.

Good luck.

 

It is likely that you will likely NOT see any speed differences between a single 120Gb SSD and a pair of (raid0) 60Gb SSDs.

Your raid setup might well be slower (and in theory more prone to failure) because the either the disk controller, chipset, or OS now has to manage the raid set in addition to the disk volume.

 

only very rare and specific usage pattern would see benefit of RAID 0.

 

What is your budget and capacity requirements? Does power consumption matter? Each SSD based on one of the 5 major controllers (Sandforce, Marvell, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba) has their advantages and disadvantages depending on your needs and they also differ slightly based on capacity. If your laptop has only 2 slots for 2.5" HDDs (9.5mm or 12.5mm height), the best configuration for speed and capacity will always be 1 SSD (30-512GB depending on how much you need and your budget) for your main drive and programs and 1 HDD (750GB max for 9.5mm and 1TB max for 12.5mm height) for storage.

The current best all around SSDs tend to be the Sandforce and Samsung drives (Samsung has slightly weaker I/O but better power consumption and consistency), while the Marvell drives have slightly higher throughput but less I/O numbers than the Sandforce, the Intel has the best I/O (and random R/W) but weak sequential writes, and Toshiba has the lowest power consumption (and performance, though honestly I'd doubt you'd notice the difference in real life usage).

 

I went with an SSD Raid 0 setup (2x160GB X25-M) and it works out well for me. Programs take no time to load, and I have about 15 games installed. I also removed my blu-ray burner and made it an external so that I can have a storage drive (1TB) to store all media and documents. Works out well. Although my chipset limits the 4K pretty hard, there were work arounds and tweaks. I have all the tweaks I used to set up my everyday use SSD RAID 0 setup, as well as before and after numbers. The intel drives don't compare to Sandforce drives when it comes to write speeds. Also realize that you will be loosing TRIM by going RAID 0, so I suggest creating a backup image weekly if possible. And create one once you have your system setup and tweaked as you would like.

 

I'm confused, I was once told that Vertex 2 (or any one with SF controller) will be best for RAID0.

I don't care if the speed degrades after usage in RAID0, as I will do what DR760SE said. I'll take back-ups and so...

I will choose to go with RAID0, I will do my own real-life tests, if I notice speed bump, I will keep the second one, if I don't I have many people who will be happy to have there computer running faster, I'll give it to one of them.

I think Vertex 2 and Crucial C300 are the best.
I will get the 60GB/64GB version.
Which one is better in RAID0 performance in general?
As I said, I don't mind about GC, I will do what DR650SE said.

 

For pure performance, hands down the C300.

 

translation: I will keep asking around until I find someone that agrees with me **regardless** of what anyone else says.

 

lol, I understand what everybody said.

Part of it, everybody agreed it depends on my usage pattern. So, I want to try and see if I really get satisfied.

So, again, the question is:-
1) SATA II only
2) RAID0
3) Never mind about speed degradation, I'll back-up and so
4) 60/64 GB each SSD.
What is the best SSD with all the above in mind?


@sgogeta4, thank you.

 

If you want to spend a whole lot of money on 2 SSD's in RAID 0 because the laptop you just spent a whole lot of money on does not have enough RAM, you should have bought a laptop with 4 RAM slots.

 

It's not a whole lot of money on 2 SSD's RAID0
1 120GB Vertex 2 is slightly pricier or slightly less pricey than 2 60GB Vertex 2.

 

any 2 SSD would work and the difference is not that large. just leave a bit more space as unallocated and you don't need to worry about GC.

personally i would choose the most reliable as RAID 0 increase the failure rate linearly.

 

Thank you chimpanzee. I will get the vertex 2 SSDs, I have to wait other stuff so I will wait also for the SSDs, hopefully the price would go down a bit...

Also new Intel SSDs are out in February, maybe this would have some effect on price.

 

Refer to my last post. Also, you mentioned that it's cheaper (in fact in the deals section, you can now get this drive for $100 - LINK) so even more reason not to get the C300 (Marvell controller). Btw the "new" Intel SSDs are based on the current controller with added SATA/600 support. At their high MSRP, I doubt they'll drop current prices.

 

I can't get it at this price (100$,) but still I can get 2 for 212$ with a bit of work, which is cheaper than 2 Vertex 2.

Can you explain to me why C300 is better, please? (which will be used in RAID0 for sure)

 

Read some reviews and do some research.

The SSD Manufacturers Bluff | The SSD Review

Is a good place to start. It's written by Les (Flemenko), who was very active and knowledgeable user here about SSDs. Not sure if he still visits NBR frequently nowadays, but there is a lot of info in the new SSD thread.

 

Les is no longer with us (banned). You'll have to contact him through SSD Review.

 

Aww why'd he get banned?

 

w4j3d, whatever you do, don't spend any money until you actually have your laptop and are using it. Also if you have no experience with SSD's and/or RAID 0, just buy one at first. If you feel like you need more then buy a second. But since you said you are getting this because 8GB is not enough for your software, I still don't see how this is going to do much good. It's a bandaid solution at best and not actually doing anything about the root of the problem, that you need more RAM.

He was banned for the statutory bleep of Charles P Jeffries.

 

To the best of my knowledge, he violated forum rules (which is the reason for this post, I think). I don't know any specifics, however, but I suspect it may have something to do with advertising for his site. I don't know for sure, though.

 

According to this: Benchmark Results: 4K Random Reads/Writes And Interface Bandwidth : Tom's Hardware's Summer Guide: 17 SSDs Rounded Up

At 4k Random Reads: The Vertex 2 100GB -which should be similar to the 60GB one- has 74.38% of the speed of IOPS of the 64GB C300.

At 4k Random Writes*: The 64GB C300 has 54.84% of the speed of IOPS of the Vertex 2 100GB -- which is identical to th 64GB one according to the specs of both.

So they both have there advantages, but the Random reads maybe more important that the Random Writes, and vice versa. The article mentioned above ( link) concentrates on Random Writes, in which the vertex 2 has the upper hand by big margin.

Isn't loading DLLs a reading operation? reading from the SSD and writing on the RAM, so to the SSD it's reading. Am I right? If I'm write then the logic in the article is false.

I will now search for other factors and see which SSD of the two I was talking about (C300 64 vs. Vertex 2 60GB) will perform better in general.

 

Samsung 470 256GB RAID0: 4K write is almost double of single Samsung 470 256GB

While I was told 4K read/writes won't be affected. 4K reads gets slightly lowered in speed, while 4k writes almost doubles.

 

While benchmarks might show differences, as stated before, onboard RAID controllers (especially in notebook chipsets) are going to be the limiting factor (esp. in IOPS). Also, despite number differences, in real life, our perception cannot measure a difference in nanoseconds or even a fraction of a millisecond.

 

Unless you are running a heavy duty database style setup, 4K write is usually meaningless other than benchmark. On Windows, it is the 4K read that dominate, 4K write can be shielded by aggressive OS/drive cache writeback policy(especially it is not that much going on).

As for 4k read, even it may have doubled, the effect is very difficult to notice when we are talking about 0.1ms -> 0.05ms(comparing with 4ms -> 0.1ms, i.e. HDD -> SSD). Now if your SSD has say 0.12ms latency and my Intel has 0.06ms, mine still beat yours even you are using RAID 0. Note the number is just there as an example of scale we are talking, not actual.

It all comes back to the same old same old, what is your usage pattern.

 

Since we don't have TRIM with RAID0, I'd go with drive which comes with best GC. According to AnandTech New Kingston V+100 got the best GC (Which is why apple choose them for their new range).

Anand saying he never test SSD which got that much aggressive GC.

 

Please see post #37. Les says 4k write is most meaningful.


@chimpanzee
@sgogeta4
I understand now the effect is marginal, now I'm just a bit curious.

@bigspin
I think both Vertex 2 and C300 have good GC, I'll go with these since they are faster than V+100.

 

Unfortunately, he is no longer here so he cannot explain why.

Let me give you my view and you judge it yourself.

1. For typical Windows usage, small random read way out number write(this is based on data collected by Microsoft). So if your usage fall into that category, read is much more important. That is also the rationale behind the whole Readyboost thing(which use device with much slower write speed than typical HDD yet have noticeable improvement under low memory situation).

2. For those relatively few writes, if you turn on aggressive cache policy, they are handled nicely by the drive cache. Under my resource monitor, almost all the writes have a response time of 0ms(i.e. not measurable) and it is those read that slows me down. And this was on a 500rpm disk(and now a 7200rpm)

Note this depends very much on usage pattern. If your usage depends on lots of sequential write, get a drive that is good at that(a RAID 0 helps in this case as well). If your usage depends on lots of random write(say database), get a drive that is high on write IOPS. There is no one drive better than another, without a context.

For my usage, I am quite sure my Intel is best.

My advice is, find out what you need first then read those reviews and pick that right numbers to compare.

 

C300 is good only if you have TRIM. Don't go for it. See Anand review about C300 which detailed this issue.

 

With sandy bridge i would go with a single C300 256gb, or if you can wait for C400/X25m-G3. I would wait for proper support for trim and raid before going that route.

 

TRIM and RAID is not something that can be done by the SSD but the RAID controller/driver.