SSD Raid 0? SSD + mSATA?

Hi guys. First time poster and first time soon to be laptop purchaser!

I am currently finishing up my NP9170 build, but I'm unsure what to do with the drives. I'm commited to NOT having a mechanical drive on board, so 240 GB should be plenty for me. I'm unsure if I should be getting a single 240 SSD, or perhaps an 80 mSATA for boot with a 120 GB SSD. Or, should i get 2 120 SSD running in RAID 0? Note that I will be running this mostly for embedded development work, but there will be some gaming on the side during slow times

I'm basically trying to figure out what would be best performance-wise. Does anyone have any input for this newbie? I apologize in advance if this topic has been discussed ad infinitum. The search function doesn't seem to work for me....

 

markus506,

Safe to assume you'll be running Win 7? What kind of dev work? Programming a PLC or SBC? Running VMs for your embedded OS?

If your work involves something that write a lot to the SSDs over RAID-0, you may want to experiment with the *desktop* version of Intel's RST for Win 7, otherwise, you may need to image the drives, and do a Secure Erase if your WRITE performance begins to suffer due to write amplification problems. A search for RAID SSD will provide the details (more on searching below)

If you're going to be using the machine for business purposes, is it safe to assume you will make daily backups? While small, a 2 drive RAID-0 array will almost double the chances of catastrophic failure. However, with a backup routine, issues can be mitigated.

In regards to searching, you can use other search engines to search against this forum. For example, with Google, try "site:forum.notebookreview.com ssd raid" ( http://.com/?q=site:forum.notebookreview.com+ssd+raid )

 

jclausius,

thank you for the reply. Development work is AutoCAD, EAGLE PCB design, MPLAB (Microchip) embedded development and some other tools. I will be running WIN 7 pro.

I will be making daily backups to an external HDD (probably a WD passport drive, or something to that effect) that I will keep with me at all times.

I don't really need a RAID setup; I guess what I am wondering is what is going to give me the best performance. Should I use an mSATA to boot and an SSD drive for everything else, or perhaps just a large SSD for boot and applications? (Music, pics, backup data stored on external HDD).

Thanks again for any help.

-Mark

 

I don't know what size of CAD files you're talking about nor how many.

For example, my dev works require compiling tens to thousands of C/C++ files and running testing on multiple VMs. Work won't splurge for a 750GB or higher SSD, so I use a pair of Momentus XTs.

How many normal drives (non-mSata) can fit in the NP9170?

 

The CAD files are in the KB size. The largest embedded project I would do would only have a couple of hundred files, so I could easily keep all my frequently accessed data on the SSD and have room to spare.

I think the NP9170 has room for an mSATA drive and 2 other drives. 3 if there is no optical drive.

I guess the reason I am asking the question is that I saw an Xoticpc review of the NP9170 where they had an mSATA and an SSD in a RAID 0 configuration and they talked about the blazing speed. Since SSD's are typically extremely fast, howuch would a RAID 0 configuration actually get you?

 

Not faster than you will see a difference from non RAID to RAID 0.

Definitely not worth going for, you'd be better off getting a mSATA for work related things and a slave drive (normal HDD drive) for everything else, basically a waste of money in my opinion... unless you've got money to spend haha people tend to have that on these forums!

 

From a pure I/O perspective, it can be anywhere from 50 to 100%+ increase (on 2 disks) - http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Does-RAID0-Really-Increase-Disk-Performance/394/1. However, that may not be as important as you think.

Let's say the RAID 0 volume gives you 90% boost on a file read. But you're talking loading a 20KB file. So instead of the 250 ms it takes to read that file from SSD, it takes 25 ms. Pretty fast, right? But you're a human being. Will you really notice the difference? Remember, all we're talking about at this point is pure disk i/o. We haven't covered that the computer still needs to use the CPU and memory to run the app and perform computations on that file's data.

So you need to understand your CAD programs and other apps. Find out if they are more CPU bound or disk I/O bound. Using "Resource Monitor" may give you an idea of where things spend the most time. Once you have that data, then you can answer the question if paying around ~ $1/GB is worth that increase in performance while also increasing your chance of catastrophic failure.

 

This makes sense. The RAID 0 is probably not worth the chance of catastrophic failure. I am probably better off just getting a 250ish GB SSD drive and call it a day. I'll get an external HDD for backups and all the extra crap that I don't need to access frequently. Thanks for all the help!

-Mark

 

On a side note, remember the odds of something happening remain small. Mathematically, they get just under 2X the chance.

For example, with a .1% chance of drive failure, you have to make decisions that 99.9% uptime vs. 99.9999% uptime is worth the extra cost/risk.