Intel X25-E: 2x 32GB in RAID 0 or single 64gb?

[totentanz]

Any insight into this? Cost-wise, they're about the same. Is there any real-world performance benefit to the RAID 0 vs the single drive, aside from large file transfers?

 

[Ribby]

I ran a couple of 32GB X25-Es in raid 0, it was insane. I was copy-pasting big files and transferring on the same logical drive at 150-230MB/sec from memory (using onboard crappy raid solution on my Gigabyte P965-DS3P).

I'd personally go raid, the latency is so low you're better with combined read/write performance. Anyone else feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though!

 

[aznx]

RAID 0 with 2 32gb X25-Es will be faster vs 1 64gb X25-E.

 

[totentanz]

How much faster though in terms of real-world performance? Is it worth the extra hassle? (do I need to get a separate RAID card to get the added performance, or would an X58/ICH10R handle it ok?

 

[aznx]

Internal should be fine unless you're worried about loss of power..so UPS?

 

[alext5]

You need to consider the fact that it depends on your cpu speed.

I write at about 80MB/s and read at about 220MB/s with an X25-M 80GB but while writing cpu is at 100% with a Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz.

With that being said, even if you would put 4 of them in raid 0, there is a point where your cpu will be the bottleneck. SSD are not your average drives. There was a time where the bottleneck of most systems was the HD, not anymore.

 

[aznx]

You need to consider the fact that it depends on your cpu speed.

I write at about 80MB/s and read at about 220MB/s with an X25-M 80GB but while writing cpu is at 100% with a Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz.

With that being said, even if you would put 4 of them in raid 0, there is a point where your cpu will be the bottleneck. SSD are not your average drives. There was a time where the bottleneck of most systems was the HD, not anymore.

It shouldn't be at 100%...at most maybe 10%..

 

[alext5]

It's not at 100% all the time. It's at 100% while there is heavy write. HD light is synchronised with the cpu going at 100%. It may not be scientific and everything but still.

 

[Cyrilix]

That definitely doesn't sound right, if your heavy writes are using 100% CPU on a given core.

 

[Ockie]

It depends on the controller. A good controller should give you little to none resource consumption. A bad controller or a cheap controller will tax the cpu to death or hog your resources while in use.


I would go the raid 0 route

 

[DonDon]

Well, it depends on your future plans. If you are concerned about being able to use this drive for a long time into the future, then get the bigger drive. If you are interested in the absolute best performance you can get today, then go the RAID route. 32 gig is considered a very small drive by today's standards. But 3 or 4 in a RAID 0 will be a viable OS drive for several years into the future.

Unfortunately, there are few people that can give you actual advice as to whether a single drive or a Raid 0 drive of the same model will give you real world performance gain. A Raid 0 setup will give you some performance gains in benchmarks, but may not make a real difference in day to day use.

If you are moving from a magnetic drive, either setup will be an amazing upgrade for you.

Don

 

[alext5]

It depends on the controller. A good controller should give you little to none resource consumption. A bad controller or a cheap controller will tax the cpu to death or hog your resources while in use.


I would go the raid 0 route

Thank you for pointing that out, the controller in question is the controller from an inexpensive dell laptop, nothing fancy.

The question we should ask the OP is what's his machine looks like.
If he has a 60$ motherboard going the raid 0 route doesn't really make sense.

 

[JasonSTL739]

Any insight into this? Cost-wise, they're about the same. Is there any real-world performance benefit to the RAID 0 vs the single drive, aside from large file transfers?

I would do the two 32GBers. Perfectly fine - in fact I would encourage it - to use the ICH10R for SSD's

You need to consider the fact that it depends on your cpu speed.

I write at about 80MB/s and read at about 220MB/s with an X25-M 80GB but while writing cpu is at 100% with a Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz.

With that being said, even if you would put 4 of them in raid 0, there is a point where your cpu will be the bottleneck. SSD are not your average drives. There was a time where the bottleneck of most systems was the HD, not anymore.

You have something wrong, or misconfigured, in your system. No way you should see 100% usage.

Also, it is actually the SATA controller that becomes the bottleneck should you run 4 of them. Not the CPU.