Best SSD for raid 0?

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Robertmarcus

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Jun 4, 2012
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Im looking to buy some new ssd's to put in raid 0 for some of my applications and a small amount of games and win7. Ideally, it would be two 120gb ssds, but which ones? I have been looking around, unable to decide as their are a gazillion on the market. I dont want intel (as they cost way to much), but id like some high quality ssds. I was thinking corsair, ocz v4, samsung, mushkin, or kingston (either 3k or 5k).

Thanks
 
Why RAID0? (Not sure if you're trolling or serious.)
 
Serious. Speed. Its all about the speed. I have tons of backup drives, so im not worried about it being corrupted.
 
What are you putting it in? Do you even have a sata 6 controller?
 
Are there RAID controllers that support TRIM over a RAID0 set?

The speed won't be noticeably faster (that is, less than 10% better). Even if you have perfect backups, your downtime odds will be higher; unless you have no value over your own time and convenience, that's a loss.

Do you have some special application that does tons of large-block sequential I/O that you're trying to optimize?
 
Yes. I am using a z68 ud3h b3 (old i know). I plan on buying a raid card in the future, but that is not happening soon.

Any speed increase is welcome.

Specs:

i5 2500k
7970
gigabyte z68x ud3h b3
2tb wd black

I have four sata 6 ports and a sata 6 controller.

All i wanted was some recommendations...
 
I have been running a pair of 60GB Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe in Raid 0 for over a year, in my main PC. I have no other drives in this system, and I get read and writes over 800Mb/s according to ATTO. A single drive, it's more around 550 read and write.

I have never had an issue with this Raid 0, and I am using the onboard SATA III AMD SB950 controller, on my ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard. I have no TRIM support, and I probably rebuilt my PC (with doing full secure wipes on both drives) once every 6 months or so?

I love the speed!

Certain Intel controllers do provide TRIM in raid nowadays. I'm not an Intel guy, so I don't know anymore about it.
 
Thank you. I have looked at the mushkins, but i dont know about their quality, as they are the cheapest ssd's on the market, so the reliability may not be as good as something like the vertex 4.
 
mikeblas said:
Are there RAID controllers that support TRIM over a RAID0 set?

The speed won't be noticeably faster (that is, less than 10% better). Even if you have perfect backups, your downtime odds will be higher; unless you have no value over your own time and convenience, that's a loss.

Do you have some special application that does tons of large-block sequential I/O that you're trying to optimize?
Click to expand...

Yeah, Intel finally released TRIM with RAID. It's in a thread here somewhere.
 
Robertmarcus said:
Thank you. I have looked at the mushkins, but i dont know about their quality, as they are the cheapest ssd's on the market, so the reliability may not be as good as something like the vertex 4.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it the cheapest SSD on the market, especially compared to the Vertex 4.

128GB Vertex 4 - $114.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227791

120GB Enhanced Chronos Deluxe - $184.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226225

Both are rated at same sequential read speed (560) but the seq. write on the Mushkin is rated faster (515 over 430)...and the Chronos Deluxe has a 5,000 higher rated IOPS for seq write.

Now this is on paper, but you probably wouldn't feel the difference. I love Mushkin, and have had nothing but quality products with them (I own 4 Mushkin SSDs -- Two Chronos Deluxe, and two Chronos, several multiple different speeds/sizes of RAM, and a few 32GB Mushkin SDHC cards...all still working).
 
tycoonbob said:
128GB Vertex 4 - $114.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227791
Click to expand...
The 256 GB Vertex 4 is cheaper, at $210 (compared to $230 for two 128's).

tycoonbob said:
Both are rated at same sequential read speed (560) but the seq. write on the Mushkin is rated faster (515 over 430)...and the Chronos Deluxe has a 5,000 higher rated IOPS for seq write.

Now this is on paper, but you probably wouldn't feel the difference.
Click to expand...
That's a 20% difference, about twice the improvement he can expect from RAID0 in the first place.
 
He will see more than a 10% improvement putting two SSDs in Raid0...assuming it's on a quality SATA III controller.
 
blinx said:
Yeah, Intel finally released TRIM with RAID. It's in a thread here somewhere.
Click to expand...

The only way you can have trim with raid is if the ssd isn't part of the raid.

Example, you have two 1tb hdds in raid 0 and a single ssd by it self, trim will work.

Item says it will be in the 11.5 drivers. It seems intel is in no rush to release them.
 
tycoonbob said:
He will see more than a 10% improvement putting two SSDs in Raid0...assuming it's on a quality SATA III controller.
Click to expand...

I doubt it. Can you find tests that replicate those results? A 10% improvement in what, specifically?
 
When did the mushkins get to 180/drive? when i looked at em a month ago they were 90$ each. I think i will end up buying the two 120gb vertex 4's for reliability. Any good quality raid cards under 100$?
All i would be using it for would be the two ssd's.
 
The Chronos Deluxe uses Synchronous NAND, whereas the Chronos uses Asynchronous.

And as I stated earlier mikeblas, I have a pair of Chronos Deluxe in Raid0 in my main PC. One drive by itself, I can see ATTO topping out around 525-550ish read and write...whereas in Raid0, it tops out at over 850ish read and write. I don't feel like ripping my raid apart to proove that to you, but I can run ATTO on my Raid0 so you can see that if you wish.
 
525ish what? megabytes per second for sequential read? That's a nice benchmark number, but you'll rarely never read 50 megabytes sequentially in real life, not to mention 525 megabytes. (Unless you've got some specialized application -- I asked Robertmarcus about that and he didn't respond.)
 
I'd bet the money you're going to spend on the drives and controller that you wont be able to really tell the difference in day to day use between a RAID0 set and a single drive, unless you're writing tons of massively large single files.

It'll be great for e-peen bragging, but honestly, don't expect it to be "all that" and a bag of chips. ;)
 
Robertmarcus said:
Thank you. I have looked at the mushkins, but i dont know about their quality, as they are the cheapest ssd's on the market, so the reliability may not be as good as something like the vertex 4.
Click to expand...

Mushkin makes quality gear and are an American company, if that matters to you. The brand of your SSD matters less than the controller and the type of NAND in it. Stay away from asynchronus NAND (this is usually what's in the cheapo SSDs).
 
I know. It'll mainly be for boot and app loads, but 99% of the time, it'll only be good for bragging.
 
I'd recommend a Crucial M4, Plextor M3, or Samsung 830 series. All Sync or Toggle NAND (no Async bullshit), good controllers, good warranties, good track records.
 
tycoonbob said:
He will see more than a 10% improvement putting two SSDs in Raid0...assuming it's on a quality SATA III controller.
Click to expand...

If you are using the intel sata 3 controller you will almost 100% scaling. You will start to hit at wall around 1000mbps. I remember Alan from pcper saying that in a podcast. And he is the ssd guy.

Op you should email him and see what he says. The guy is a freak, all he does is test ssds.
 
If you are using the intel sata 3 controller you will almost 100% scaling. You will start to hit at wall around 1000mbps.
Click to expand...

That is STR (sequential transfer rate) which is good if you do a lot of very large sequential reads and writes (or if you like high benchmark numbers) but not as useful in most real world applications. IOPS is what SSDs are about and raiding them does not usually help much with IOPS or small read / write performance. In some cases raiding may reduce performance by increasing latency and reducing the IOPS.
 
Robertmarcus said:
I know. It'll mainly be for boot and app loads, but 99% of the time, it'll only be good for bragging.
Click to expand...
Had you stated this originally, you would've gotten a more direct answer. Since you're optimizing for bragging you should buy whatever you think would impress your friends the most.
 
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