First time SSD's, installing two new ones.

I've asked a few people and I've been getting conflicting opinions...

1) Should I Raid 0? Before or after installing OS?
2) What stripe size?
3) Any tips? First time SSD's. I know to enable trim and not defrag.
4) What did I just buy? I am losing control of my life.

 

1. Don't RAID, there's little to no benefit
2. See number 1
3. TRIM should be enabled by default. Just do a clean install of Windows 7 or 8 and you should be set
4 You can send them both to my attention. I will turn crazy instead.

 

If I don't raid and then I change my mind and want to raid 0 will that delete everything or no?

 

Yes. In both cases, if you RAID 0 then want to split or have them separate, and go to RAID 0. In both cases you will have to backup your data and do a clean install.

There is no real good reason to RAID with SSD's. The benefit is minor other than benchmarking bragging rights.

 

Well now...I didn't buy those hard drives for nothin'.

 

Nothing wrong with those drives, very nice ones. Easily can be put to good use.

 

I think I am gonna go with Raid 0. Data loss isn't a huge concern as my most important files would be game saves and uhhh..."videos and pictures". There isn't any other major concerns to running Raid 0 except for data loss across both drives, right? Will Raid 0 wear out the drives faster? Shouldn't really be a problem considering their 150TBW 10 year warranty, right?

 

You are decreasing your 4K speed performance which is what matters most and you are adding 2 to 3 seconds of extra time to your boot time due to the RAID controller activation upon startup

Don't RAID on an SSD! simple as that!

Read this thread and see how everyone advices the dude that it actually hurts performance for a normal / power user . It is only beneficial in a server environment where they do a lot of large file transfers not for the normal user

1 Single SSD vs 2 SSD RAID-0

 

Okay, thanks for the info!

Edit: I read through A LOT of that thread and what they're saying makes sense. I suppose no raid.

 

yeah bro, been there, done that, believe me the RAID 0 was slower in real world performance, forget the bragging rights about benchmarks, yes you will get double the benchmark score ONLY in sequential Read/Write speeds which don't really happen in a normal or power user's daily workflow

let me give you an example

previously, I have two Samsung 840 PRO 512GB SSDs so I put them in RAID 0 just to try

now on a single SSD, taking a complete image snapshot using Macrium Reflect after a clean install / install all windows updates takes 58 seconds

when I did it with RAID 0, I thought it should finish in at least 30 seconds right? wrong! the job completed in 1:23 seconds!

Forget RAID! Raid is good for those slow HDDs in the past. Any single SSD would demolish a RAID 0 configuration in snappiness! not talking useless synthetic benchmarks here

unless all you do is copy large 10 GB + files from one drive to the other which I doubt you do, then it has 0 benefits for you

I never worry about the data loss risk, I care about performance, and for sheer speed, Single SSD FTW

 

Data loss risk should be a non issue regardless of how many drives you have in your PC. Backup, backup, backup... and backup some more!

 

I did Raid 0 because a friend that majored in computer tech debunked pretty much everything here and in that thread (below) that was posted. All is good and insanely fast.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1500862/1-single-ssd-vs-2-ssd-raid-0

 

Sure thing. Have fun with that.

 

Can you do a benchmark for us? Also the 4K speed?

 

I've done it, notice the slower 4K speeds compared to a single SSD

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 (W8.1) [RAPID]



AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 in RAID RDx2 (W8.1)



AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 (W8)

 

My Raid 0 score is like double yours and I'm on Windows 7 which has like 10-15% less SSD performance.

 

Wrong, every single benchmark I've run on every single SSD is 10% faster in Windows 7.

Also, which SSDs did you test? what was your Data Stripe Size? 64K?

 

Samsung 850 Pro 1TB x2 Raid 0...64k, write back cache mode, buffer flushing disabled.

 

Well to start off with, that's not a fair comparison, an 850 1TB would run circles around the 840 EVO 1TB. Heck, even my previous 840 PRO 512GB SSD beats my 1TB 840 EVO so no wonder you have better scores on *your* RAID because it is with better drives. The comparison I showed above was beteen 840 EVO Single VS 840 EVO RAID

show us your 4K speeds on RAID please

 

4K speeds were only slightly faster than yours IIRC. I'm at work now so I can't check.