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    Question about RAID

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by FancyJules, Jan 30, 2012.

  1. FancyJules

    FancyJules Notebook Enthusiast

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    Is it better to have 1 SSD with, say, 120 GB or 2 SSD each with 60 GB with RAID? Also, if the second is a better option, should I go with RAID 0 or RAID 1?

    Thank you :)

    Sorry, I'm kind of a noob when it comes to this stuff.
     
    FancyJules, Jan 30, 2012
    #1
  2. SlickDude80

    SlickDude80 Notebook Prophet

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    from my own experiments:

    2 x 60gig ssd's in Raid 0 wiill be faster than 1 x 120gig ssd. However, if one of your 60 gig drives die, you lose all your data. Its probably best to just go with 1x120 gig ssd as ssd's are plenty fast already

    RAID 0 and RAID 1 are completely different things.

    Raid 0 allows you to put together multiple drives and windows sees it as one larger drive. So windows will see 2x60gig drives as one 120gig drive and it will treat it as such. Performance will be faster, but it is more prone to failure because if one of the drives in the array die, you lose everything

    RAID 1 is copying the same data identically onto multiple drives. This is called mirroring and is used to back up important stuff. It allows for safety, because if one drive dies, you still have it backed up on another drive, and windows will continue to run on your back up drive. In your 2x60gig example, windows will only see 60gigs available.
     
    SlickDude80, Jan 30, 2012
    #2
  3. Meaker@Sager

    Meaker@Sager Company Representative

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    Unless you can get a large discount like me buying two smaller drives than one big drive, just get 1 large one.

    Less issues and unless you in an area where you know you are drive speed limited then you wont notice the difference.

    Also later you can add another one, or run a 2nd large mech drive for storage.
     
    Meaker@Sager, Jan 30, 2012
    #3
  4. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    Wikipedia has very good writeups on RAID technology:
    Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    I used to do desktops and had several RAID setups going. For a primary drive they ultimately proved to be a headache.
    That said, I agree that two drives in RAID 0 is a bad idea. RAID 0 isn't really RAID at all since there is no redundancy. You double the risk of data loss with a two-drive RAID 0 array; as noted, you lose one drive, you lose your data. Period.

    RAID 1 mirrors data across two or more drives and is very safe however with a two-drive RAID 1 array, you double the cost of storage. It's best used for backup. For a primary drive (as in, Windows installed on it), I almost always side with the single drive.
     
    Charles P. Jefferies, Jan 30, 2012
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  5. Abidderman

    Abidderman Notebook Deity

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    I agree with the posters above. I use a SSD as my primary and use a hdd as my storage, backup/ image drive. Then I back everything up on an external. I don't think in normal usage you would notice much speed difference between your M4 and a Raid 0 with smaller drives anyway. There would be some overhead, and the remaining difference would most likely only be seen/ noticed by benchies.
     
    Abidderman, Jan 30, 2012
    #5