SSD: 1x 128GB or 2x 64gb in RAID 0

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Stugots

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I'm looking to upgrade my system with a SSD. I have an HP xw6400, the onboard SATA is only capable of 3Gbit/s. Right now I have 2x 250gb 7200rpm disks in RAID 0.

Would there be any benefit in buying 2x 64gb SSD's and running those in RAID 0 versus a single 128gb SSD? I'm pretty sure any one SSD will easily max out my SATA bus, but will I get around that limitation if I add a second drive?
 
Wow no one has ever asked this question here before! This should be a very insightful thread!
 
This question get's asked like once a week. Try using the search function before posting.

Example: (I searched for "raid ssd")
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1755425&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1756395&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1755117&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1753129&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1751392&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1749171&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1749171&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1748879&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1748879&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1747459&highlight=raid+ssd
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1746748&highlight=raid+ssd
 
I did search, and I couldn't find anyone who has asked if running 2 SSD's in RAID 0 on a 3Gbit/s controller would run each drive at 3GBit/s or run them run them both at 3GBit combined.
 
Don't buy 64GB drives, they're slower and not cost effective. You can overcome the 3Gb limit with a RAID0, but I wouldn't do it, rather buy a single 128 or better 256GB drive.
 
Are there any compatibility problems running SATA3 drives on a SATA2 controller?
 
acascianelli said:
Are there any compatibility problems running SATA3 drives on a SATA2 controller?
Click to expand...

Hi, acascianelli,

Nope no compatibility problems at all. You may have to flash the BIOS to the latest available, but that's about it. I run SATA3 SSDs on my SATA2 intel controller on all my systems with no problems.

As mentioned earlier 64Gb SSDs wouldn't be the best choice. The smaller the SSD the slower they are.

Hope this helps.

Chuklr
 
Chuklr said:
Hi, acascianelli,
As mentioned earlier 64Gb SSDs wouldn't be the best choice. The smaller the SSD the slower they are.

Hope this helps.

Chuklr
Click to expand...

Slow enough where 2 in RAID0 will be slower than 1 larger drive?
 
acascianelli said:
I'm looking to upgrade my system with a SSD. I have an HP xw6400, the onboard SATA is only capable of 3Gbit/s. Right now I have 2x 250gb 7200rpm disks in RAID 0.

Would there be any benefit in buying 2x 64gb SSD's and running those in RAID 0 versus a single 128gb SSD? I'm pretty sure any one SSD will easily max out my SATA bus, but will I get around that limitation if I add a second drive?
Click to expand...
I returned an Intel 480GB SSD to instead get two 240GB SSD's on 6Gbit/sec SATA, and run RAID0 on them. The newer Intel's with newer Intel drivers, are able to do TRIM in RAID0 nowadays. I'd only do RAID0 with a very reliable brand of SSD, and if you had regular backups (and/or a large plan with a cloud backup service such as Dropbox or Google Drive).

It takes advantage of bandwidth from separate SATA ports so it's cumilative if the ports aren't bottlenecking each other in any way (e.g. chip level or bus level bottlenecks, etc).
I'm getting more than 6Gbit/sec sustained from reading large files (e.g. 5 gigabyte files).
I've seen my data transfer rates peak at more than 1 full gigaBYTE per second :D
Does wonders for videogame load times, too.

acascianelli said:
Slow enough where 2 in RAID0 will be slower than 1 larger drive?
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On average, no. It'll be generally faster for video gaming (e.g. loading large game files).

It will be slightly slower for things like loading massive projects of tiny files, since the IOPS goes down slightly (by about 25-30%-ish for me -- 80K down to ~60K). But I've noticed no slowdown on average real-world computer performance, and usually faster game/app loading times and copying massive files around (e.g. video files). My disk subsystem isn't the bottleneck for my computer. It's fun to toss half a gigabyte (between two locations on the same drive) in just one second flat.

Still, I wouldn't touch RAID0 until you were starting to play with 128GB or bigger SSD's. RAID0 would be very clearly beneficial beginning with 128GB SSD's and upwards.
 
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Mark Rejhon said:
I returned an Intel 480GB SSD to instead get two 240GB SSD's on 6Gbit/sec SATA, and run RAID0 on them. The newer Intel's with newer Intel drivers, are able to do TRIM in RAID0 nowadays. I'd only do RAID0 with a very reliable brand of SSD, and if you had regular backups (and/or a large plan with a cloud backup service such as Dropbox or Google Drive).

It takes advantage of bandwidth from separate SATA ports so it's cumilative if the ports aren't bottlenecking each other in any way (e.g. chip level or bus level bottlenecks, etc).
I'm getting more than 6Gbit/sec sustained from reading large files (e.g. 5 gigabyte files).
I've seen my data transfer rates peak at more than 1 full gigaBYTE per second :D
Does wonders for videogame load times, too.

On average, no. It'll be generally faster for video gaming (e.g. loading large game files).

It will be slightly slower for things like loading massive projects of tiny files, since the IOPS goes down slightly (by about 25-30%-ish for me -- 80K down to ~60K). But I've noticed no slowdown on average real-world computer performance, and usually faster game/app loading times and copying massive files around (e.g. video files). My disk subsystem isn't the bottleneck for my computer. It's fun to toss half a gigabyte (between two locations on the same drive) in just one second flat.

Still, I wouldn't touch RAID0 until you were starting to play with 128GB or bigger SSD's. RAID0 would be very clearly beneficial beginning with 128GB SSD's and upwards.
Click to expand...

Why would raid 0 be more beneficial to drives 128GB and bigger? I'm pretty sure the benefit comes solely from using the bigger SSDS, not the Raid 0.

My 32GB Vertex 1 is much more useful to me in raid 0 with another one as then it can actually hold a windows 7 installation. Without raid 0 it won't even hold Max Payne 3. So what do you mean about the 128GB and up benefit to raid 0??
 
Well, the only way I use RAID 0 is with 2 64gb drives. My system isn't good enough to dump that kind of money into 2x128gb drives.

At this point I'm leaning towards getting 2x 64gb drives and run them in RAID 0. I know that the smaller drives are slower, but two slightly slower drives in RAID 0 will give me more performance than a single larger drive. If I'm understand correctly, with 1 drive I will max out at 3Gbit/s, but with two drives I will be able to circumvent that limitation to some extent.

I already have a NAS at home that houses all my sensitive data, so the increased risk of drive failure is not important to me.
 
but two slightly slower drives in RAID 0 will give me more performance than a single larger drive.
Click to expand...

Only for large files that are read or written sequentially or high queue depths. Neither of these are common for most desktop applications or even games.
 
Your system has nothing to do with it. Every computer (or rather every user) deserves a SSD.
 
ZodaEX said:
Why would raid 0 be more beneficial to drives 128GB and bigger? I'm pretty sure the benefit comes solely from using the bigger SSDS, not the Raid 0.
Click to expand...
Anything can benefit from RAID 0.

However, we're talking about deciding whether to buy two 64GB SSD's versus one 128GB SSD.

Depending on model, there exists some 64GB SSD's that perform roughly half the speed (especially write speed) of the corresponding 128GB SSD in the same model line. Therefore in this situation, if a new buyer was making a decision, there's a considerable incentive to buy one 128GB SSD rather than buying two 64GB SSD's, given the same total price. Same speed, keep high IOPS, and avoiding RAID 0 risk.

However, the decision becomes different if you're deciding between whether to buy two 256GB SSD or one 512GB SSD. (or 240GB vs 480GB), since the single-drive read/write throughput is very similiar between these two levels. You get a far clearer RAID 0 benefit in this buying choice.
 
I'm getting more than 6Gbit/sec sustained from reading large files (e.g. 5 gigabyte files).
I've seen my data transfer rates peak at more than 1 full gigaBYTE per second
Click to expand...
Just wondering....how are you determining these speeds and what drives are you using?
 
raid your ssds.

they will be faster than a single drive in all scenarios when it comes to reading.
 
The problem is that when you'll want to buy a newer SSD (or two) those 64GB will be too small to be of any use. Also, I doubt you can buy two 64GB for the price of one 128GB.

And don't forget an SSD is already a RAID of several NAND chips, that's why 64GBs are slower, they have less chips and can't use all the channels of their controller.
 
Aesma said:
The problem is that when you'll want to buy a newer SSD (or two) those 64GB will be too small to be of any use. Also, I doubt you can buy two 64GB for the price of one 128GB.

And don't forget an SSD is already a RAID of several NAND chips, that's why 64GBs are slower, they have less chips and can't use all the channels of their controller.
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Honestly, none of that applies to the question.

Too small for your use, sell 'um.

Check the prices. You'll find little if any difference.

Running out of channels is just another reason to RAID what you have.
 
The reason why I'm considering RAID 0 is to overcome the 3gbit limit of my SATA2 controller.

I now see what everyone was talking about with the smaller capacity SSD's having much lower performance than the larger drives.
 
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I would personally get the 128GB drive and keep the 250GB platter drive for storage. Running RAID 0 doubles the chances of corruption and SSD failure so make sure you have a backup if you decide to run RAID.
 
acascianelli said:
The reason why I'm considering RAID 0 is to overcome the 3gbit limit of my SATA2 controller.

I now see what everyone was talking about with the smaller capacity SSD's having much lower performance than the larger drives.
Click to expand...

except they are full of it. smaller ssds only have performance issues on writing, not reading.

and considering you have a limit of 3gb/s, you can hit the full 6gb/s speed by raiding, where you'd be stuck with 3/gbs for sequentials without raiding.
 
The reason why I'm considering RAID 0 is to overcome the 3gbit limit of my SATA2 controller.
Click to expand...
You can't go any faster than the limit of your chipset no matter how many drives you have.

What people fail to say is that RAID also increases the all important 4K and 4K-64Thrd specs.

High read/write speeds look pretty but in all reality are used very little.

I run 3 SSDs on an LSI card and in the past year have never had a failure of the array.
 
RAID0 can be ooh, ahh neato for a home user, but imo it's not anywhere a necessity for that kind of environment. I suggest you get a single larger drive. It's still an SSD upgrade: it'll blow the doors off any spindle drive in all aspects, regardless of SATA port revision.

Here's an example from my personal experiences:
I have an older i5-450M laptop with SATA2. Upgraded the 5400 rpm HDD to a SATA3 capable 240GB SSD and boot speeds went from around 2.5 minutes counting power on to full Windows desktop load to just under 30 seconds. I then upgraded my whole laptop that had SATA3 ports. Same SSD...full boot in 23 seconds. Every application and game I load does so in a blazing fast manner. I'm no where within the concern factor or yearning for RAID 0 SSDs because I feel a single drive it too slow. Having a single drive also eliminates the worry of double the failure rate...in which I'd have to revert back to a single drive anyway if I had to RMA one of them. RAID0 is cool for bragging rights if all you plan to do is run benchmarks, but for real-world use, either a single or twin drive SSD setup is going to be fast as hell.
 
RAID0 is cool for bragging rights if all you plan to do is run benchmarks, but for real-world use, either a single or twin drive SSD setup is going to be fast as hell.
Click to expand...
Some can tell the difference and some can't.

It's just a matter of opinion but it bothers me when some haven't tried it and recommend against it from what they've read.

Personal experience is always the best and those that haven't tried it should just sit back until they've have. :)

It's no big deal to install a RAID OS and if you don't like it, reinstall a to a single drive from a back-up.

There's plenty of arm-chair computer pros but I try everything and I suggest others do the same.
 
Old Hippie said:
Some can tell the difference and some can't.

It's just a matter of opinion but it bothers me when some haven't tried it and recommend against it from what they've read.

Personal experience is always the best and those that haven't tried it should just sit back until they've have. :)

It's no big deal to install a RAID OS and if you don't like it, reinstall a to a single drive from a back-up.

There's plenty of arm-chair computer pros but I try everything and I suggest others do the same.
Click to expand...

I suppose I should have mentioned that I set up a twin Samsung 830 64GB RAID0 setup which failed 3 times in 2 months. After configuring to 2 separate drives, I could discern no difference in performance. The failures did occur prior to RAID0 TRIM support coming along...if that even had any bearing.
 
DejaWiz said:
I suppose I should have mentioned that I set up a twin Samsung 830 64GB RAID0 setup which failed 3 times in 2 months. After configuring to 2 separate drives, I could discern no difference in performance. The failures did occur prior to RAID0 TRIM support coming along...if that even had any bearing.
Click to expand...

TRIM definitely wasn't the problem and I don't know what was but your experience was not typical.
 
Old Hippie said:
TRIM definitely wasn't the problem and I don't know what was but your experience was not typical.
Click to expand...

You know, I kind of figured it was just one of those "out there" anomalies. Was on an Asus Z68 LE MoBo. Couldn't find any info about others really having such problems on that MoBo, so I chalked it up to SSDs in RAID0 being a crappy choice. Fast forward to over a year now, and there's been zero problems with the drives running independently.
 
Couldn't find any info about others really having such problems on that MoBo, so I chalked it up to SSDs in RAID0 being a crappy choice
Click to expand...

Flakey chipset is probably more like the problem.

It's difficult to troubleshoot now but a BIOS or drive firmware update may have helped.

Sometimes you just get a particular combination of pieces-parts that just don't work well together.

I found this about your chipset...

Right Guys I have resolved this, a small, but easy mistake to make and a slightly unusual set up is the problem. Props to Dereck47 for his hand in the resolution.

1) The MOBO BIOS needs to be set to RAID BEFORE you install the OS, you cannot set it to RAID afterwards. (This is obvious achilles heel #1) the only solution is to re-install Windows
2) The controller will assume you are trying to use the SSD as a cache if you plug a single disk, or a single disk and a (planned) array into your SATA ports
3) If you install Windows on the SSD straight away and then change it to RAID or add disks and make them RAID you will get a blue screen crash.
--NB I'm not 100% sure whether this applies to the MARVELL controller but definately to the Intel one
4) You CANNOT on this board set each SATA port individually between RAID and AHCI, if RAID is enabled it's enabled on all the ports. (this is obvious achillies heel #2)

NB: This applies for the Intel Controller (CTRL+I during POST, and NOT the MARVELL one)

How to do it: For SSD OS Disc and SEPERATE RAID HDD Array of your choice (0,1,5,10)
1) Fit ALL mechanical disks and SSD drive into situ and work out your cable layout
2) Plug the SSD disc on the 1st 6G port and your CD drive on the second 6G port. (Use your mech HDD drives on the 4 remaining SATA 3gb/s ports, Don't plug them in yet though!!)
2) Boot into BIOS and select RAID mode for all the Intel ports (it will be AHCI by default so change to RAID)
3) Reboot, you will see the RAID screen in POST but you should only see the SSD listed..good, if not back up and start again.
4) Install Windows and do all the updates/service packs
5) Go to the Intel site and download the latest drivers and a neat app http://downloadcenter.intel.com/De [...] 2&lang=eng
6) Reboot, check again in your BIOS that RAID is enabled
7) Turn off and plug in your planned RAID array disks, I find it easier to do it one array at a time, so I have 2 arrays on 4 disks, so I plug 2 drives in first
8) Reboot, Press CTRL-I during POST to get into the RAID controller
9) Assemble your array in the controller, selecting the drives.
10) Reboot into BIOS, double check your boot sequence (SSD first)
11) Boot to windows, initialize and format the drive in Disk Management
Click to expand...
 
Old Hippie said:
Some can tell the difference and some can't.

It's just a matter of opinion but it bothers me when some haven't tried it and recommend against it from what they've read.

Personal experience is always the best and those that haven't tried it should just sit back until they've have. :)

It's no big deal to install a RAID OS and if you don't like it, reinstall a to a single drive from a back-up.

There's plenty of arm-chair computer pros but I try everything and I suggest others do the same.
Click to expand...

I have tried ssd raid 0 myself, fear 2 load times were way longer. I had to learn the hard way too - from experience.
 
I ended up going with a single SSD. Sandisk Extreme 120gb, picked it up at MicroCenter last night for $110.

After firing it up, I definitely think I made the right choice going with a single drive instead of messing around with RAID. The RAID controller on my motherboard would not detect the drive correctly, so I wouldn't have been able to run RAID 0 after all.

Also, when I was getting some benchmarks of my 2x160gb in RAID0 I noticed that those drives were only SATA/150. I could have sworn they were SATA/300, but I guess not. Here are some before/after benchmarks with SiSoft Sandra

2x 160gb 7200rpm 16mb cache SATA/150 RAID 0
WEI: 5.9
Seek time: 7.51ms
Drive Score: 101.76MB/s (66.3MB/s - 121.56MB/s)

1x 120gb Sandisk Extreme SSD
WEI: 7.3
Seek time: 101us
Drive Score: 248.8MB/s (225.21MB/s - 250.18MB/s)

Overall I'm mostly happy with the choice. For some reason I was expecting my system to seem faster, I guess I'm just overestimating the performance of these old Xeon's.

Next upgrade is get these ridiculous Quadro FX 3500's out of here and replace them with a single faster video card.
 
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