SSD vs HDD decision

So I recently purchased a Lenovo W530 with RAID enabled on 2x500gb hard drives. I have no real desire to use those drives and plan to replace them with some combination of an SSD + HDD.

So right now I see 2 basic option that I'd like to go for:
1. 250GB SAMSUNG 840 + 1TB Seagate Hybrid Drive

2. RAID 0 with 2x 250GB SAMSUNG 840 's

SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com
Newegg.com - Seagate Solid State Hybrid ST1000LM014 1TB 64MB Cache 2.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Laptop Hard Drive -Bare Drive

So my primary question is, what would you do?

Be aware that there is also an mSATA slot available for an SSD although I don't think it can be used in RAID. If I go for option 1, would there be a better HDD to use than the seagate? Any other ideas are also appreciated.

 

If the best performance (sustained, over time) along with reliability is what you want: forget RAID0.

The 1TB Seagate 5400 RPM Hybrid is not recommended for the highest performance either - that title belongs to the 750GB Seagate 7200 RPM Hybrid HDD.


What is your requirement for RAID0?

If you want the overall fastest setup possible; get an Intel 525 mSATA 240GB SSD, along with 2x SanDisk Extreme II's 240GB SSD's (not in RAID0).

Install your O/S on the mSATA drive (assuming it is SATA3 capable on your system...) and use one SEII as your Program/Scratch/Temp drive and the remaining SEII as your Data drive.


RAID0 is great when doing large video/audio (RAW...) editing - but for almost any other use it is simply for bragging rights... your system may even be subtly slower with the RAID0 than without it.


See:
One SSD Vs. Two In RAID: Which Is Better? - Are Two SSDs Any Better Than One?


To even further increase the SSD storage sub-system's performance, consider maxing out the RAM of your platform (especially for 3 SSD).

See:
Experiment: Can Adding RAM Improve Your SSD's Endurance? - Can You Get More Speed From Your SSD By Adding RAM?


Of course, the above along with OP'ing is even better.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...arks-brands-news-advice-1065.html#post9292781


The only way to improve the true (overall) performance of the storage sub-system is to get a platform with NGFF which will hopefully put RAID0 to rest once and for all (yeah; I know... what if we RAID0 NGFF drives... yawn).


Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info!

The mSATA slot is only SATA II, while the other 2 drive bays are SATA III.

I currently have a desktop PC with 250GB SSD and 1TB HDD that will be replaced by the W530, hence the plan to have the same storage solution in the laptop. I consider the speed of my current setup sufficient.

The RAID option is something I'm considering since I might be able to get away with less overall storage on my machine, because I also run a home server with roughly 6TB of storage.

I understand that RAID 0 in SSD's might not get much more performance in normal tasks, but would help in some situations. This was the same argument that people gave when I setup RAID 0 on 2 HDD's about 8 years ago; people said it wasn't really faster, but that's because they were jealous. Really, the RAID 0 would be nice just so I don't have to deal with 2 logical drives in windows.

I will be upgrading the RAM to at least 16GB as well.

I'm still leaning towards the 1TB 5400rpm drive over the 750GB 7200rpm just for the extra storage. Are there any other options for this? 1.5 or 2TB drives?

Overall I'm still leaning towards the 250GB SSD and 1TB HDD solution; any thoughts?

 

Using a Seagate SSHD for pure storage purposes makes little sense - unless you have a specific usage pattern in mind. The perf improvement (thanks to Sata3 + large buffer) will hardly be noticeable during normal operation, while being significantly more expensive than a similar non-SSHD drive (1TB SATA3 e.g. 5k1000... or the 1.5TB 5k1500, around the corner). Note that if you're after pure storage space, the 12.5mm-thick MQ01ABC150 is also a decent drive (a bit noisy, but good perfs).

This caveat set aside... a variety of real-life benchmarks show that despite the lower rpm a 1TB SSHD performs about the same as the older 750GB XT, and I can confirm it is a very, very decent 5400rpm drive even during non-Flash-backed usage. And pretty silent, too. Way quieter than the vanilla 1TB ST1000LM024/HN-M101MBB. As a sidenote, the pure perfs and noise differ very little between the 500GB Laptop Thin and its bigger brother - came as a surprise to me.

As for Raid'd SSDs: it's up to you to decide about the threshold where speed improvements stop being worth the price/inconvenience, and whether it's likely to be regularly noticeable for your own usage pattern. How many times a day do you boot your lappy? Can you spot a 'sluggish' boot time whenever it's 2 instead of 1.1 seconds? etc. etc.

 

There will be no comparison from a desktop platform to a notebook platform (desktop still superior - especially in storage sub-system 'performance' metrics).

With the mSATA being 'only' SATAII - then the only change I would recommend is making it the Data drive instead (same SSD) and the SEII's the O/S, Program and Scratch/Temp disks.


I would listen to those friends if I were you - the link I provided shows that in certain scenarios, even a single SSD is faster than two in a RAID0 array (even if the RAID0 drives were each half the size of the single SSD...). But more importantly; the real world performance differences are almost within the margin of error: in other words, insignificant (considering the doubling of components for a single digit improvement).

And especially considering the potential downsides of RAID0 (nothing will survive; O/S, Data, settings, etc...).

With a 6TB home server I would not be too worried about (less than) 250GB less capacity.

What I would want is a completely durable mobile platform (that an SSD (or three) offers) rather than still being reliant on a mechanical HDD going into the second half of 2013...


You have the facts and it doesn't seem like your workload 'needs' the advantage (high sequential reads/writes) that RAID0 offers, but it seems like you've made up your mind anyways.

As for the 1TB Hybrid; I always choose the performance option when I can; capacity (after a certain 'minimum', of course) is always addressable without reconfiguring your system.

Performance though will make you want to upgrade the system well before it should be retired/sold/given away (vs. using it with the optimum/currently 'best' available components installed).


Glad to have helped a little.


...

 

I guess I shoulda showed you the best deal on the SSHD: Amazon.com: Seagate 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6Gbps 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch ST1000LM014: Computers & Accessories

I figure $20 more is worth it to have the SSHD even if it ends up just being used for storage. I assume it will still get better performance for some scenarios if I'm heavily using certain files on it.

Also I believe I'm limited to 7mm or 9.5mm drives.

One other thing to consider is what I will do with the leftover 500gb HDD's. I'll probably try to sell them online, but doubt they'll bring much.

So right now I'm still thinking the 250GB ssd + 1TB SSHD; then maybe in the future i'll add an mSATA SSD if I want to dual boot.

 

Yea, I'd love to use the slower mSATA SATA2 interface for pure storage, but even though I have the 6TB server, I really would like to have at least 1TB of local storage on this machine since it is also acting as my desktop replacement. I think to get enough storage in mSATA would be too expensive to be worth it.

I'm trying to consider getting past my need for the 1TB local storage and relying more on the server, but I know I'll be so frustrated when I'm trying to download files over the internet that I need to access.

 

I would choose the first option.

SSD has the best performance for OS and applications. In the event of a serious computer failure, the SSD can be linked to my desktop, whereas mSATA is not standard on desktop motherboards. You can argue that most laptops will have mSATA but when your laptop dies then you have to wait for a replacement. With SSD you can work off desktop.

I consider a HDD to be "better quality" when it is most reliable and durable. I do not know where to find information about error or failure rates.

 

Ok, so thanks to everyone for all the information. I think I've come up with a few solutions that include using an external HDD when needed in addition to my home server which I normally have easy access to.

So for now I'm planning to just get one SATA3 SSD in the range of 250-480gb. The three main contenders I've found are listed below:

SanDisk Extreme 240GB
SanDisk Extreme 240GB 2.5in SSD SATA3 SDSSDX-240G-G25 Solid State Drive

OCZ Technology 480GB Agility 3
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00566FEUO/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

Samsung 840 Series 250GB
Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5in SATA3 MDX Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD

Any other good options out there? Obviously more storage is better, but I'm looking to consider price and performance as well.