2 SSD's in RAID 0

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bmogensen

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Apr 19, 2011
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Hi there, I am trying to figure out what gives the best performance for my system with the regards to investing in some SSD's.

I have been looking at the Crucial SSD C300 64 Gb, buying 2 of these and putting them in RAID 0.

I have an AMD Phenom quad core CPU (9950 Black Edition), 8 Gb DDR II RAM on an ASUS M3N MB with SATA-II NVidia chipset and currently have the following HD's installed:
  • 2 Samsung Spinpoint (128Gb) in RAID 0 -> to be replaced with single or RAID'ed SSD
  • 4 Samsung Spinpoint in (256 Gb) RAID 0

The 4 Samsung Spinpoint in RAID 0 gives good performance currently, but I want to know if they will be out performed by:
  • 1 Crucial C300 128 Gb SSD OR
  • 2 Crucial C300 SSD in RAID 0

The performance of my 4 Samsung Spinpoint in RAID 0 are:
  • Minium transfer: 128 Mb/s
  • Maximum transfer: 181 Mb/s
  • Average transfer: 158 Mb/s
  • Access time: 12,7 ms
  • Burst rate: 144 Mb/s

Please let me know if I will be worthwhile investing in the SSD's, either a single or RAID'ed SSD's. Thanks in advance! (BTW I know my setup is a bit old but anyway, I would like to optimize a bit....)
 
You should get way faster read speeds with 2 C300's in RAID 0, you'll get ~725MB/s (best speed). As far as write goes you'll get approx 2x the rated write speeds.
 
Does the Nvidia chipset pass trim commands?

That would be my primary concern, or make sure you keep plenty of free space and select drives with good idle garbage collection. Otherwise your blazing new drives won't be quite so blazing in a few months.
 
What will you be using the drives for that you need the transfer speeds of Raid 0 SSD? Just curious.
 
Trim is overrated and if you config your pc correctly RAID 0 stays fast pretty much forever without Trim. I have a SR-2 using 2x Intel X-25M 160GBs RAID 0 and a SB using Crucial C300s 256GB RAID 0 and they are as fast as they were day 1. Just get the latest IRST. Use QSoft RAMDisk for temp/tmp files and internet browser files. And shut off the swapfile and superfetch.
 
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

I was a bit concerned about the TRIM stuff, but it seems it should be possible to get decent SSD RAID performance based on your comments.

I was planning to install Vista Home Premium 64 bit on the SSD RAID.
 
Why not Win 7x64? Either way the IRST driver works. And superfetch disabling is a must must on Vista. OH if you cannot re-install the RAID 0 easily keep a backup just in case.
 
Thanks Falcon, will definitely make note of that. Only reason I am not instlaling Win 7 is because of my budget... already have Vista 64 :)
 
IMHO, two small SSDs in RAID0 are a bad idea for several reasons. First, one SSD is fast enough, especially if it's 120GB or higher (often, 64GB or smaller are slower). For wear leveling purposes, it's better. Having used an SSD for 6 months without trim and with the supposed "idle garbage collection", I can say my SSD didn't stay fast at all, in transfer speeds anyway, response time was still good (I did this test on purpose, I could have "trimmed" with the appropriate software anytime). I don't see the point of having a fast drive if you're not gonna put the swap on it, either. As for the internet temp files, it depends of your usage and your internet connection, personally I'd rather not having that vanish at each reboot.

Also, if one day you want a new SSD, two small SSDs will be difficult to sell, and not practical for a laptop second life.
 
To educate folks and difuse mis-information QSoft RAMDisk and others like it store an image of the memory to disk at shutdown and reload it at startup if you configure it to do so, if you care.
 
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