1 80 SSD or two smaller 32's in RAID 0?

T

T3ch

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2006
Messages
154
About to pull the trigger and though I would float this by you guys...
If you where in my shoes and had $200 to spend, would you go with 1:

Intel 80GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167016

or 2x OCZ 32 GB in RAID 0

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393


Would the difference in speed of the raid make up for losing the 16Gb of space?

My plans for the drive is OS and what ever games are my current infatuation. Only 2 or 3 games on it at a time and moved to a strage drive when not playing them much.

I am currently leaning towards the RAID...thoughts?
 
The dual vertex's should pull 250-350 MB/sec transfer rate. The Intel should hold about 125-150. Is that worth the 16GB that you'll lose? Is the speed worth dealing with the 2x potential failure rate? Do you have any backup software that hates RAID-0 configs? Do you need the space, or should you go for the speed? How big are the games we're talking about?


...you need to answer these. we cannot.
 
Sabregen, thanks for the quick reply,

The faster speed I think would be worth the speed (for me at least) as I plan to only keep the games I am currently playing on the SSD the rest on the drive in my sig which will be relagted to storage duties.

Now if someone replied these drives were crap and got a low precentage of MB/sec transfer rate while RAID'ed I would have ran for the hills. This being my first foray in SSD land I kinda wanted it to be speedy but inexspensive. As for the failure rate 3 years limited on them seem fair enough to gamble on, and I use Acronis True Image 2009 for my back ups and was under the impression it would be fine with imaging on or off of a RAID 0 config.


The question of speed or space I will error on the side of speed.

Most of my latest games are 6 -10 GB per. With Windows 7 pro being 15gb in size or so I figure I got 40+ GB at a time for a game or 3...
 
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For the OS Drive get the Intel for sure. It's quite a bit faster in small random read and writes which is what matters most for an OS drive.

For transfer rates as long as properly setup, both of them as single drives should easily do 200+MBps reads. My little 32gb vertex on it's own tops out at 243MBps.

And with one drive you'll also get ability of TRIM which will keep your SSD in tiptop shape.
 
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Aren't there apps out there that can do similar work to TRIM but for RAID'ed drives? They do not have to be wiped clean then re-imaged to avoid the slow downs that occur with out TRIM clearing the issues from deleted blocks and or garbage collection? Or do they need to be wiped everyso often and hence another need for frequent images?
 
T3ch said:
Aren't there apps out there that can do similar work to TRIM but for RAID'ed drives? They do not have to be wiped clean then re-imaged to avoid the slow downs that occur with out TRIM clearing the issues from deleted blocks and or garbage collection? Or do they need to be wiped everyso often and hence another need for frequent images?
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My understanding is that you can use Intel's SSD Toolbox to do a weekly 'trim' operation on raided drives (It's not the os-level actual Trim, but does the same thing, as I understand it), and get the same effect.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure.
 
"Is the speed worth dealing with the 2x potential failure rate?"

So is it really 2x the failure rate? Eg comparing 40GB Intel vs 80GB Intel... the 40GB has half as many flash chips, seems like a single 40GB SDD would be less likely to fail than the 80GB. Really SSDs are already basically putting all their falsh chips in raid0, you're just adding on to it. But with 2 smaller drives vs 1 bigger you still end up with same number of flash chips total in raid0. You do end up with 1 extra controller chip, so yeah MTBF is lower, but 2x lower?

I dunno just thinkin.
 
So then the Intel 80GB will be faster in the OS, than the raided 32GBs? and gaming would be the same?

So the only benifit of the raid is copying data on and off the RAID?
 
So then the Intel 80GB will be faster in the OS, than the raided 32GBs?
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Yes. The Intel 80GB is much faster at 4K reads and writes. These are the ones that happen the most in the real world. Not the 100MB+ reads that take less than 1 second.

and gaming would be the same?
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Depends on the game disk usage pattern.

So the only benifit of the raid is copying data on and off the RAID?
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No. This should help in several ways but 2 crappy controllers do not mean that you will be better than 1 good controller.
 
Thanks for the reply drescherjm,

Hmmm, It would appear that I was too infatuated with the possible gains of the raided SSD’s and I should go for a quality drive now then as I save my pennies try to get another later to raid them.

I have yet to see anyone post in support of the RAIDed 32’s so I guess it is unanimous ?
 
The Intel would be many times faster regarding Random read/write; you would need 8 Indilinx drives to match the random write speeds of 1 Intel; for example. Reading goes a bit better already; still i prefer Intel to anything else right now.
 
I'd definitely go for a single 80GB X25-M over a pair of Indilinx based 30GB drives in RAID0, though you won't really notice the difference between the two -- I didn't. In benchmarks, the difference is obvious, but in my real world usage, not so much. Have you looked into the Sandforce drives? I've been holding off any new SSD purchase until those drop a bit in price.
 
Go with the intel, I got an ocz drive and I am not impressed with it at all.
 
Hey Enginurd! I was hoping you would stop by here...


Have you looked into the Sandforce drives?
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They are mighty fast with read /write up to 285MB/s and 275MB/s respectively but they seem pretty expensive at the moment. (75% higher-ish ) I have waited this long to pull the trigger on SSD’s and almost see a "Wait loop" ahead of me... like when I see with others and choosing video cards, always waiting for the next gen to fall into their price range and then it does, there is always something newer, sparkly and shiny on the horizon, they then again start waiting and never pulling the trigger, eventually being stuck with older hardware. While others that do jump in may pay a bit more but they get the experience and the reward of the use while they watch others wait. Crazy right? Heh, damned technology always moving so fast.
 
hehe, yah, i can afford to wait because i've already dropped plenty of cash on my ssd's, lol. i wish i had kept my vertex drives, though. oh wellz. go for the intel x25-m. when prices drop more, grab another for some RAID0 action. :p
 
T3ch said:
Hey Enginurd! I was hoping you would stop by here...




They are mighty fast with read /write up to 285MB/s and 275MB/s respectively but they seem pretty expensive at the moment. (75% higher-ish ) I have waited this long to pull the trigger on SSD’s and almost see a "Wait loop" ahead of me... like when I see with others and choosing video cards, always waiting for the next gen to fall into their price range and then it does, there is always something newer, sparkly and shiny on the horizon, they then again start waiting and never pulling the trigger, eventually being stuck with older hardware. While others that do jump in may pay a bit more but they get the experience and the reward of the use while they watch others wait. Crazy right? Heh, damned technology always moving so fast.
Click to expand...
I have an ocz sandforce drive, the numbers aren't real at all, they come from one benchmark. On real sustained sequential writes my kingston value ssd is faster, the ocz has way better random reads and writes but the sequential is maybe 40-50% of advertised speed.
 
Pulled trigger on the Intel 80GB, was worried the deal would end soon as I saw this promoted on ~alot~ of other sites.:eek:

Thanks all for the input, i feel you guys saved me from a somewhat expensive mistake! :D
 
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