Pair of RAID 0 HDDs or single SSD?

Hello,
I have a Dell Covet M6400 on order from Dell. The M6400 features two interal drive bays and hardware-controlled RAID.

Which would be faster / better: a pair of RAID 0 7200 RPM HDDs, or a single SSD with the OS/Apps on it and a secondary 7200 RPM HDD for data storage?

I was thinking of going with either the Intel X25-M 80GB MLC SSD or the Samsung 128GB MLC SSD. I am a little confused, as I bet a pair of HDD on RAID 0 will be pretty close in performance to a single SSD, afford me more HDD space, and be cheaper. I do regular backups and do not fear loosing too much data if either configuration were to kick the bucket.

I will be doing mainly web & print design, animation, programming, video/audio editing and some gaming on this machine.

I know there was a similar thread a while back- but the machine in question did not have hardware controlled RAID ability and that seemed to kill that option for him. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Nixx

 

Even with hardware raid, an SSD will be faster... although i myself would go with 2 raid zeroed 320gb 7200rpm.... i'd rather go for speed and capacity, than extreme speed, no capacity, and a high price.

 

My issue with RAID 0 in laptops is how high your risk of data loss becomes. RAID 0 should be used nowhere outside of gaming rigs, elsewhere it should be a RAID 0+1 on a proper RAID card or be regularly backed up.
It sounds to me like you're going to be using this machine for work, so in that case, it's very simple: get the SSD.

 

Ditto on the SSD. You can't come close to the access time of an SSD with any hard disk.

Greg

 

In this day in age external hard drives are cheap enough. Heck, for $40 or $50 you can get a pretty big thumb drive. Back-up everything. RAID 0 your laptop with a vengance...or something.

 

I like the Raid 0+1 idea, or even Raid 0 with software backup, but the problem is hdd bays, only select laptops have 3. The SSD would be awesome, but is very pricey for a good one. For the best performance/price I would say a 7.2k320 + 5.4k500 (as there is no 7.2k out, to my knowledge). This allows you both high density drives, one very quick, the other similar in some areas of speed, but a huge backup. But to each his own. GL with your choice.

 

Sorry... RAID 0+1 requires four hard drives minimum and like I said, a proper RAID card, not just driven off the chipset like most (all) laptop RAIDs... I was speaking generally. With 3 bays you could do a RAID 5 but that's really about getting best data security in the least amount of drive space, less about speed. And I don't think unmatched drives is really a good answer to his question. He didn't mention size, he mentioned speed... so 7200rpm 320 would be his best choice for a RAID 0 for speed (on conventional drives).
I will echo my earlier post: easily the SSD.

 

I agree that it shouldn't be used in anything other than in a gaming rig or a such.

But I'd preffer RAID 1+0 though, safer than 0+1, but only if you use have more than a 4 dics array. Or else they have the same securitylevel.

 

Yeah most people do it at 4 drives at which point, there is no difference.

 

Yeah, i was just stating that if someone where ought to use one of those raid-levels and reading this thread, they should know what to choose if they're using more than 4 drives Though that's not likely as this is a notebook forum, hehe

 

Get the SSD for the primary drive and a normal HD as a secondary drive just for storage. You get the best of both worlds with this setup

Put all the resource hogs like the OS, games and programs on the SSD drive so it loads like lightning. Everything else goes to storage.

Chances of data loss go up two folds with a RAID0 config

 

No correct answer on this. If money not the issue I like flips suggestion for his stated reasons.