SSD vs. Raid 0

From some other pages I've read on the internet, it seems that a notebook with two 500GB 7200RPM drives set up to RAID 0 may be equal in performance to a computer with a 160GB Intel G2 SSD and a second 500GB 7200 RPM drive. Certainly the hard drive is faster in the RAID configuration, but from what I'm reading, even the data on the SSD may be roughly similar to the RAID performance. Anyone have any experience with this?

 

it might reach the raw speed or surpass it (for writes), but the latency won't drop a bit, and is still in the 15ms compared to 0.065ms.

so depending on what part, there are orders of magnitude of performance differences.

or, in short: raid0 might result in a fast drive, but not in a snappy drive. what i love my ssds for is not their speed, it's their snappiness. that's what makes you feel 'woah, fast' all the time. there, raid0 won't help.

 

dave hit the nail on the head. Raw sequential R/W speeds might match or surpass a single SSDs but these sequential speeds really don't mean anything in terms of real life performance. SSDs will still destroy RAID 0 HDDs in random R/W and access time, which are the most important factors in performance.

 

Think of it like this:

RAID0 with mechanical HD's is like telling a slightly deaf sprinter to run to second base: you tell him... he goes 'huh?' then Bam! He's there.

With an SSD the question is 'answered' within a tenth of a second (or faster) of it being asked - there is no 'huh?' - and then it too is Bam! There.

When the SSD's R/W speeds (sequentials) match the mechanical RAIDed HD's, then there will be no comparison between SSD vs. RAID0 HD's - the SSD's will have the 'snap' and the raw speed in one package.

This is happening soon: look for G3 Intel SSD's (or almost any current Sata3 (6Gbps) SSD).

 

SSD > Raid 0s.

 

Most SSD's are indeed faster than mechanical drives. Especially when we are talking about laptop harddrives.

However, the price difference comes into play, where per unit dollar, mechanical harddrives get you more.

K-TRON

 

Ah, the almighty dollar.

 

based on the price difference, ssds get me more. you just don't understand that yet, how wrong you are. once you have realized how low the amount of really needed space is, cost per gb suddenly gets absolutely unimportant. in terms of speed, size, silence, ruggedness, the ssd wins big time over any form of raid0. easily.

 

lol. you have gone absolutely mad with ssds.

Point of the matter weather its worth the cost or not is a opinion and up to each person. Factually speaking the SSD > HDD in terms of random seek and access times so real life performance will be a lot better. HDD though can hosts a lot more space and cost you a lot less. It definitely has its place and purpose.

Video editors would make good use of sequential speeds and the space offered by the raid 0 config of hard drives.

I still dont see many instances where the SSD is going to greatly revolutionize my computing, if something takes .001 seconds instead of 1 second to open. Sure its like 1000x faster but its still only 1 second

I'll still withhold my opinion till I get a 160gb G2 like I plan, then I can say very directly "I have one, I use one, and I can say it was a waist of money" or so I think I will. I mean I have not experienced it yet but I can easily imagine as I open an application and wait a couple of seconds what it would be like to have it open instantly and then I can conclude that its not a big deal. I open maybe 5 applications in a average session of using my machine, thats only seconds saved, even with boot included a sdd wont cut more than 1 minute of time off of my overall waiting for stuff to load during a normal session. Thats what my logic assumes by adding up all the waiting I do currently witch is very little with just normal hdds.

 

i was mostly replying to K-TRON who still thinks an ssd is not worth it over a raid0, as the read/write speeds are the same. as if that would change anything how fast a pc feels.

indeed, for video editing, a raid0 could be nice. but for general usage of an os, nothing beats an ssd (except a ramdisk). it does make a difference if an app opens in 1sec or in 0.01sec for the end user. if a click has a delay of a second, experience is sluggish. which is why so many love google chrome by now.

and i understand any user that by now thinks pc's got soooo fast and still all the stuff i do is so slow.

i got down one old xp machine with tons of apps that took 20minutes to be ready after everything loaded up to now be ready in <2 minutes. no raid0 would have done that, ever. now the cpu is the bottleneck

a raid0 can give the speed. but not the performance. and this, to me, is the biggest difference EVER since the first computer i've got (286 it was, survived 1 week of 'uh cool what's this?' 'DON'T!' *dead* )

 

20 minutes wow lol, my machines are fully booted in less than two/three mintues, and like I said in other threads I boot first while I hook up my mouse and power supply and stuff so its ready to go before I even sit down to use it.

I do consciously make sure almost nothing is on auto start if I dont use it almost every time I use the computer and try to keep everything clean.

I have not done it in a long time but having boot files in order and defraged helped me a lot when I used Vista on my C90S. Now that I use Win7 I have not tried to do that and I would think it does it on its own by now not sure.

 

well, that specific machine is a work machine and requires that stuff in the autostart.. and it was all defragged, bootfiles optimized, and such..

but ssds (especially the ones from intel, but mtrons where fine it's days, too) are AWESOME when there's a burstload of data happening, like accessing quite a bunch of files at the same time. simple example was firefox, which, in one config on a 4200rpm drive took a minute to open, took <1sec on the mtron (which is by no means fast with 80MB/s readwrite speed.

 

Oh really, I am sure that if you buy a $60 320gb 7200rpm drive you are already able to install windows and have a fast laptop. What will $60 get you with SSD's, not much, if anything it would be a rudimentary low performance drive, which will be so small you cant even use. SSD's are faster, but you have to pay out of the nose for it, and in my opinion, and a good majority of the market finds them to be extremely overpriced for what you get. The lack of a real warranty on the current lineup of SSD's isnt satisfying either. I have heard of how many fail, and you know what, I wouldnt recommend someone buying a drive which costs 10 x more for less space, and a greater chance of failure. When an SSD dies, everything is gone. When a mechanical harddrive dies, everything is still there. I am an advocate for the mechanical harddrive for these reasons. Sure the SSD can be better, but it isnt good enough, or I would be recommending it.

K-TRON

 

If you have the two bays an Intel 160GB G2 for the OS and 7K500 for the data/pagefile drive. A RAID0 with HDD's will never match it............

 

"you've heard". well, guess what, i've heard more harddrives failing while you heard that phrase than ssds actually exist.

in short: don't spread fud. ssds are MORE reliable than hdds, as they have a smaller attack vector. (a.k.a. the whole physical attack part gets completely dropped, the only remaining one is manufacturing errors and firmware errors, both existing on hdds just as well).

none of your arguments make sense. a mechanical hdd that dies is very expensive to get the data back.

you just didn't have a chance to have an ssd yet.

you can buy all your components to build your own amazing dualquadcore system, or get a tiny core2duo ulv with a fast ssd, and would get more speed in ordinary os usage out of it.

and that, is where the money part really comes in. you can buy yourself a new amazing laptop, or for half the price (or a quarter, an eight, etc.. just much less) an ssd and get MORE speed improvements with your EXISTING laptop than you ever would get with a new one.


but you don't understand that, and try to run yourself into reliability arguments that are just based on fantasy lies to make yourself believe you're right in not having invested in ssds, but into raid0 hdd solutions instead.

if i get your laptop into my hands, i don't want to accidentally drop it. mine is portable, always in my hands, and can fall down how ever it wants, it still works.


oh, and for your reliability issues. do backups. then, everything vanishes.



oh, and, for 2x60$, you can get some nice ssds (which would be the minimum for a raid0 of hdds). sure, less storage. but more performance, yes indeed.

 

That is straight up false that you lose the data when it dies... at least on the new SSDs.

"More precisely, when you reach the mean time of a drive—its data endurance—it’s not really a fail. It's not like the data is no longer there or the format has vanished. It just becomes read-only at the end of its life."

A good article on Tom's Hardware about SSD tech; basically turns into an ad to buy Kingston SSDs, but still has a lot of good info.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kingston-ssdnow-ssd,2550.html

 

Think what you want, and believe what you want.
I have owned an SSD, and all types of mechanical drives and ramdiscs. You guys may not have that luxury and only spread the bs which you read on the internets. Mechanical drives are more advenatageous in ways you will never imagine. It is hard for you guys to realize them when you are stuck in your little "oh I am an enthusiast" world, where you over exaggerate how great the most minimal things are.

That is all from me, I know what I know through experience, not from just reading some online forums

K-TRON

 

well, then why do you spread stuff that is wrong? i own several ssds, have owned and still own several hdds, and know and experienced ramdisks. your usb stick isn't an ssd btw (just kidding) which one did you have?

i know exactly the advantages of hdds over ssds: cheap, and big amount of storage. that's why they are in my home server (redundant) to give me plenty of space for all my data. but i know as well for performance how much they underdeliver compared to a good ssd.

but if you don't look at snappiness, then ssds obviously don't matter. you can match their "raw performance" with any raid0. but never their reaction speed. this is technically impossible (except with big caching solutions, but as you mostly stay on xp even today, you don't even experience that), so don't talk stuff around that just can't be true.