Question regarding SSD purchase

I'm about to make an SSD purchase and was debating on the difference and/or benefit of a RAID 0 setup as opposed to AHCI with TRIM support, specifically having two 1TB SSDs in RAID 0 rather then a single 2TB SSD. What would be advantage of having that single SSD with TRIM enabled as opposed to two SSDs in RAID 0?

 

I mean raid 0 will be faster, but riskier.

 

I wouldn't do RAID-0 on a boot drive. I'd say it's less of a problem for mass storage, provided you perform regular backups. I have a single SSD for my OS and a pair of RAID-0 7200 RPM hard drives on my notebook. Adding a single M.2 SSD and second 1 TB hard drive cost a fraction of a single 2 TB or pair of 1 TB SSDs.

 

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html


RAID0? Useless for almost all workstation type workload(s) barring huge/raw audio/video editing to external storage (which is at least as fast as the RAID0 array it is being written from...).

Not only useless, performance wise; but less reliable than a single drive too. Less performance at the lower queue depths (<8) that most workstation type workloads stick too and as the article linked shows, depending on the driver (just enabling it; not actually running a RAID0 setup...) - less performance vs. more optimal/mature drivers that may be available.

 

I was like you back in few months ago. I ended up with a single 500GB 850 evo instead of two 250GB evos, costs cheaper and less risks involved.

I don't think RAID 0 on two SSDs is worth it, unless your applications need more than 500MB/s sequential write/read. You won't notice a slight difference in boot speed.

 

Thanks for the advice all. My actual setup would have involved a single m.2 ssd as a boot drive and two 1tb hdds in RAID 0 for pc games only, but I think I'll just stick with a single 2tb hdd if there are no gains from a RAID array in this situation.

 

Then consider partitioning your 2TB HDD for your most used games like the link below suggests:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...tachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.442289/


Would ~200GB be enough for your most used games? If so, then creating the first partition at that size and installing your games there would give you almost RAID0 performance without the risk, expense or complexity (re: data recovery).

 

Interesting, 300-500GB would be what I needed on the partition... What about the TRIM function on the SSD, is it always preferable to a RAID setup?

 

On a 2TB drive, using ~500GB as the first partition would still be beneficial vs. using the whole drive's capacity (but the first ~10% is the sweet spot).

TRIM is ALWAYS preferable on an SSD. They die without it (literally and performance-wise).

But most current RAID drivers can now pass TRIM to RAID arrays too.

 

Thanks for all the answers everyone, AHCI it is. I have two HDD bays in my laptop and I'll probably use the other one with a drive that serves as a backup for files and cloned system images.

 

That's what I would've done use the M2 for boot drive and software install and leave the two HDD for backup and images. I do that same setup for Desktop as well. SSD main and HDD for storage and another SSD for the Main SSD images.

 

That's what I would've done use the M2 for boot drive and software install and leave the two HDD for backup and images. I do that same setup for Desktop as well. SSD main and HDD for storage and another SSD for the Main SSD images.

 

Agreed on using the first 500GB, you do get faster performance on the smaller partition.. I can confirm that I have experienced the following when I have done this before!