Questions about Raid 0 with SSD

So I jumped on the m4 128gb deal at buy.com and will have two of them in a few days, but I don't know which option to go with. Prior to tonight, I didn't fully understand raid arrays, but I think I got the gist of it. I've done quite a bit of searching on raid 0 with SSDs and found the gains, outside of benchmarking, to not be very noticeable. I also realize I'd lose trim, at least until Intel's RST 11.5, but even that could be a bit buggy initially.

1- If I did want to go ahead with raid 0, would creating a system image backed up to an HDD be a viable option, or would it be better to do a fresh install? I don't currently have an optical drive in my case, so it would kinda sorta be a pain to do a fresh install again.

2 - If I don't raid 0, would I be better off selling the two 128gb disks and upgrading to a 256gb for the increase in write speeds or would it be better to stay content with the OS on one drive and big apps/games on the second disk? Its also worth mentioning that I may dual boot OSx86, so using a small 25-30gb partition of my current drive vs. putting it on the HDD, may be useful as well.

While I realize I might be obsessing a little bit too much here, I rarely start new threads, and I'd just like to happy with whatever I wind up doing. Thanks!

My take is one 256GB drive (which is what I have, albeit it's a Vertex 2) instead of RAID.

As for installation, you can use an image of your current system, or just clone it directly, skipping the imaging part altogether (but an image is also a good way to backup).

I've used Acronis backup-restore (not clone) to put SSDs in three different Win7 computers (instead of fresh installs). Alignment came out fine on all. On the last one I did a reinstall in addition to the backup-restore so I could compare benchmarks on the SSD and saw no real difference.

If it were me, I would not Raid0 the two drives, at least not until trim was supported for them. If you could sell the two 128's and do well on the sale then do that and get a single SSD.

Aesma said:

My take is one 256GB drive (which is what I have, albeit it's a Vertex 2) instead of RAID.

As for installation, you can use an image of your current system, or just clone it directly, skipping the imaging part altogether (but an image is also a good way to backup).

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JRS said:

I've used Acronis backup-restore (not clone) to put SSDs in three different Win7 computers (instead of fresh installs). Alignment came out fine on all. On the last one I did a reinstall in addition to the backup-restore so I could compare benchmarks on the SSD and saw no real difference.

If it were me, I would not Raid0 the two drives, at least not until trim was supported for them. If you could sell the two 128's and do well on the sale then do that and get a single SSD.

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l'm probably going to stick with the two 128gb drives without raid, unless an m4 or Samsung 830 256gb deal pops up. I only paid $160 for each SSD, and I don't think either of them will drop to $320 anytime soon.
Thanks for the raid 0 and image/cloning info!

Does anyone know when TRIM support will be available for SSD raid? I'm in the same boat, got 2 128gb m4's that I'd like to raid, but I'm waiting on trim support. They announced back in November that RST 11.5 would support raid, but I can't figure out when it's being released.

B2BigAl said:

Does anyone know when TRIM support will be available for SSD raid? I'm in the same boat, got 2 128gb m4's that I'd like to raid, but I'm waiting on trim support. They announced back in November that RST 11.5 would support raid, but I can't figure out when it's being released.

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Everything I've read seems to indicate early Q2. Now you have me thinking about Raid 0 again lol.

I've been toying with the idea as well...just picked up a second 80 GB drive. I actually tried to use Acronis to clone my current SSD to an external drive, but when I tried to boot to the external in order to set up the RAID on the SSDs, it says "boot mgr not found"...*sigh*.

Having raid 0 will be far faster then a single 256GB SSD. The M4 can saturate sata 3gbps, so when you using raid you are opening a second channel to allow speeds faster then the limitation of 1 sata port.

You can create a usb windows 7 installer on another computer, no worries on the fresh install.

You can easily use the windows 7 create backup image, and then boot into a windows 7 disc to do a restore. It recreates the alignment properly most of the time. The windows restore does have one limitation, the number of hard drives must be the same. Even if you used a windows 7 flash drive, you need to unplug it right before you click the restore button or it will error.

MavericK96 said:

I've been toying with the idea as well...just picked up a second 80 GB drive. I actually tried to use Acronis to clone my current SSD to an external drive, but when I tried to boot to the external in order to set up the RAID on the SSDs, it says "boot mgr not found"...*sigh*.

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Try a Windows repair. It is possible you missed cloning the boot mgr part or something along those lines. I've been using Acronis for awhile and one thing I dislike about it is how it is a bit tricky to make sure you are getting the boot mgr.

af22 said:

Having raid 0 will be far faster then a single 256GB SSD. The M4 can saturate sata 3gbps, so when you using raid you are opening a second channel to allow speeds faster then the limitation of 1 sata port....

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Sata speeds have no impact on access/response times, only on large data transfer speeds. Hook up an any drive (ssd or mechanical) to Sata I, II or III, any access time difference will not be noticeable and probably won't be measureable.

The increased speed of a Raid0 array of two SSDs will apply to large data transfers and reading/writing large files. Access/response times will not be improved and in most cases for most users, access time is the more important factor and the one were the difference between traditional hard drives and an SSD is appreciated the most.

Raid0 of two SSDs will probably boot a bit faster than one, but for most users this difference would probably not be worth giving up trim support. It will also be faster for those who work with large files often, such as virtual machines, moving them around, backing them up, etc but only if both source and destination are Raid0 SSDs. Along those lines, Raid0 of two SSDs can be helpful for many gamers if map/level loads are big and any improvement at all is a big deal, such as with some online games.

But again, for many users, Raid0 SSD improvements will not be noticeable and the risks of Raid0 and loss of trim support are probably not a good trade. Obviously the pros/cons here are subjective and do not apply to everyone the same.

The increase in IOPS in raid 0 is worth it. The trim problem is going to solved within the next 6 months with RST 11.5, I'm not too worried about loosing trim anymore. (As an early adopter to SSD, i didn't even have trim on my agility 1 until it was a feature in a later firmware update)

With raid 0, you can have true 300-600 meg/second sequential transfer speeds, and a huge boost in IOPS for your random read / writes.

The next generation of SSDs are hindered by SATA bandwidth limitations, and they will be focused on increasing the 4k random read / writes, which you can overcome today with raid 0.

af22 said:

As an early adopter to SSD, i didn't even have trim on my agility 1 until it was a feature in a later firmware update

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The Agility 1 launched without trim support? That's weird because when the Vertex 1 launched it was the other way around. It had trim support but didn't have garbage collection until a later FW update. That's weird.

ZodaEX said:

The Agility 1 launched without trim support? That's weird because when the Vertex 1 launched it was the other way around. It had trim support but didn't have garbage collection until a later FW update. That's weird.

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Yes, during the early stages, there was 2 firmwares, one with TRIM, one GC, not both. The following firmware update combined them together.