Is it still a bad idea to RAID 0 SSDs

T

Trackr

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 10, 2011
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Haven't been here in a while but I remember a couple of years ago I was wondering if I should go with 2 x 128GB in RAID 0 or 256GB and I was told that because of TRIM it's a better idea to go with a single drive.

So, has that changed or should I just get a second 256GB?

Thanks.
 
The price has gone down a lot on SSDs, so it might not be worth it anymore to run in RAID 0 to get a "larger" single drive. I'd personally say the performance gain isn't going to be worth it on a day-to-day basis. You're not going to see shorter boot times or app load times. You might see higher benchmark scores.

If your 256GB is that old, you'd probably be better off scrapping it and getting a new 500GB-ish SSD. A Samsung 850 Pro 512GB is only around $220-230, or you can get the slightly slower performing 850 EVO for around $160.
 
Trackr said:
Haven't been here in a while but I remember a couple of years ago I was wondering if I should go with 2 x 128GB in RAID 0 or 256GB and I was told that because of TRIM it's a better idea to go with a single drive.

So, has that changed or should I just get a second 256GB?

Thanks.
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RAID Trim has been added for a while now.
 
Yeah, someone is selling a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB for $130.

But what if I can get another Crucial M4 256GB for ~$50?

I might not get faster boot times or app load times but I will get faster map loading times, faster file transfer and faster encoding speeds.
 
No he said Trim is now supported not that it was a good idea. If you want to use it go right ahead but you can still get another M4 for $50 and just have two separate drives you end up with the same amount of storage.
 
I would never run anything in Raid0 unless you don't mind losing data and the entire raid set.
 
MrGreg62 said:
No he said Trim is now supported not that it was a good idea. If you want to use it go right ahead but you can still get another M4 for $50 and just have two separate drives you end up with the same amount of storage.
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Am I missing something?

If TRIM is supported, why wouldn't he be saying it's a good idea?
 
Well, I'm running 3 840 Pro's in R0 now and yes, BF4 loads very, very fast. I'll be switching to 3 850 512G's early next year with the Z270 build I'll be doing. No TRIM running, but I've been very happy about how it performs. I also have a backup solution for it as well.
 
Trackr said:
Am I missing something?

If TRIM is supported, why wouldn't he be saying it's a good idea?
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It's good and bad, not perfect. There are annoyances with RAID in general. SSD RAID 0 is cool though, its real hard to fuck up. Some annoyances are the fact that it is two drives or more, and when it comes to troubleshooting, or emergency file retrieval its real hard to do on a RAID array. Because its two drives or more it requires moving the pair and hoping the test machine has the appropriate chipset support.
 
Quite a few people do not recommend RAID0 due to the fact that while it's true that you could still lose your data with only 1 drive when you run RAID0 you are dependant on 2 drives not failing. If either one goes out you lose the data on both. If you want to raid them together go right ahead it won't hurt anything but it's not really going to help most things either. If you want to wipe your drive and start over with a clean slate RAID them together however it may be a lot of work for minimal gain.
 
MrGreg62 said:
Quite a few people do not recommend RAID0 due to the fact that while it's true that you could still lose your data with only 1 drive when you run RAID0 you are dependant on 2 drives not failing. If either one goes out you lose the data on both. If you want to raid them together go right ahead it won't hurt anything but it's not really going to help most things either. If you want to wipe your drive and start over with a clean slate RAID them together however it may be a lot of work for minimal gain.
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Drive failures like that are not applicable here as we're dealing with SSDs. With regular spinner drives, sometimes it seems like all you need to do is breathe on it and the array gets broken and drives are dropped. Knock on wood my 12 drive RAID 6 array stays up lol.
 
thesmokingman said:
Drive failures like that are not applicable here as we're dealing with SSDs. With regular spinner drives, sometimes it seems like all you need to do is breathe on it and the array gets broken and drives are dropped. Knock on wood my 12 drive RAID 6 array stays up lol.
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Well SSDs do still fail , you just have less of an issue with unrecoverable reads ect. Also its not just the number of drives thats an issue it complexity as a whole. Instead of 1 Drive + File System you have multiple drives , Raid and the files system (so at least 2 more things to go wrong).

As with everything , backup backup backup. As long as you are OK with a great chance of Downtime and have good backups then Raid 0 away.
 
Eh, not worth it, imo.

I'd recommend simply getting a single larger drive and either selling your existing to offset the cost, or keep it and use a primary/secondary drive setup.
 
I dont understand why people say raid0 is a bad idea.....

I mean....if you have a 512gb ssd, you still need to back it up since it could fail and lose all your data.

2x256gb ssd if one fails.....you lose all your data, you still should have a backup.

whats the problem? in each example one drive fails and you lose the data.
 
While I can't say I have hard data, I am running mine on Sata 6 channels. I have one SSD, by itself, 3 in R0 for gaming, and one platter also on it's own. Both the R0 and single seem to update very fast, etc, etc. But, the array also deals with game downloads and installs. Seems to me a lot of people forget that drives aren't static. Consider all the Steam, Origin, and Windows updates. Consider each time you install a game. In these cases, real or imagined, the R0 array seems to really move data- like very, very quickly. No RST loaded, just the Intel chipset drivers for the board (Z87).
 
Daishiknyte said:
Two points of failure vs. one.
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I disagree, its either going to work or it isnt. The 2 ssds are working as one unit.

If you define as 2 points of failure then you should never buy an ssd cause they have 4+ memory chips in them....THATS 4+ points of failure!
 
Shadohh said:
I disagree, its either going to work or it isnt. The 2 ssds are working as one unit.

If you define as 2 points of failure then you should never buy an ssd cause they have 4+ memory chips in them....THATS 4+ points of failure!
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Pure statistics. If a certain drive has a set failure rate, and you now rely on two of them in RAID0, your odds of total loss are now twice as high. That may still be a small number, since SSDs are pretty reliable, but it's still technically true.

Regardless, 2 or 3 SATA SSDs in RAID0 are going to get their lunch money stolen by a single PCI-E x4 NVMe drive in just about any real world application or benchmark.
 
Bandalo said:
Regardless, 2 or 3 SATA SSDs in RAID0 are going to get their lunch money stolen by a single PCI-E x4 NVMe drive in just about any real world application or benchmark.
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That is certainly true if you are in a position to buy and use one.
 
shrug, running a pair of 500gb 840s in r0 for a couple years now, no issues. Of course i realize the risk i run, but i just dont care.
 
Bandalo said:
Regardless, 2 or 3 SATA SSDs in RAID0 are going to get their lunch money stolen by a single PCI-E x4 NVMe drive in just about any real world application or benchmark.
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Pssshh, I have both and a big fat mechanical.
 
I haven't had any failures yet <knock on wood> running a 3 (x1TB) SSD RAID0 drive (might be going to 4 or 5, if there's enough room in the case), BUT I setup my rigs with failure in mind. I also have a RAID1 (2x 3TB) HDD array where my docs are actually kept, along with another backup on both my NAS and various cloud accounts. If the games get zapped, I don't really care, especially with STEAM / ORIGIN / UPLAY nowadays. Sure it will take time, but on a fast connection, it's not a big deal. My boot drive is a 500gb Samsung 950 NVME single drive which outruns my RAID0 array all day long anyway.

The thing you have to ask yourself is 'What is your end objective?' Is it to speed up boot? Disk access? File transfer speed? And if any of those things are worth the increased risk when the hardware kicks the bucket (It's never a question of if, just a question of when).
 
Look at all this opinionated and educated debating. I've been running two Crucial M4 128MB SSD's in RAID 0 for 4 years with no problem. I make backups of course. This isn't the 90's guys where Raid 0 and mechanical drives had issues with each other. Yes, of course there's risk running a Raid 0 setup but you guys make it out like it's the end of the world sometimes when a good backup plan can still save the day.
 
dvsman said:
I haven't had any failures yet <knock on wood> running a 3 (x1TB) SSD RAID0 drive (might be going to 4 or 5, if there's enough room in the case), BUT I setup my rigs with failure in mind. I also have a RAID1 (2x 3TB) HDD array where my docs are actually kept, along with another backup on both my NAS and various cloud accounts. If the games get zapped, I don't really care, especially with STEAM / ORIGIN / UPLAY nowadays. Sure it will take time, but on a fast connection, it's not a big deal. My boot drive is a 500gb Samsung 950 NVME single drive which outruns my RAID0 array all day long anyway.

The thing you have to ask yourself is 'What is your end objective?' Is it to speed up boot? Disk access? File transfer speed? And if any of those things are worth the increased risk when the hardware kicks the bucket (It's never a question of if, just a question of when).
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It isn't really about chance of failure. I ran 14x3TB 7200 RPM drives in RAID0 for 6 months just fine.

There is added risk and diminishing returns. If large transfers or high que depth is your thing for sure do it but otherwise you are adding risk (slight) plus killing single que depth 4K.

I would not run RAID 0 on an OS drive because 4K is important for OS not large sequential or high QD.

data drive/game drive/back up drive? Sure I will RAID0 it if i can.
 
I would not run RAID 0 on an OS drive
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That's good, because its doing it wrong running RAID 0 on the OS drive. But then again, we don't always do everything the right way shrugs.
 
thesmokingman said:
To be fair you'd have to try pretty hard to break an SSD RAID.
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I know this is old but I have seen plenty of SSD's fail and this is recent as in this morning there were four down in a ticketing que that I looked at.
 
Hey just throwing it out there but I had a Adata 256gb drive just fail on me. Just curious as I have not really paid attention to much ssd tech in the past couple of years, but in general is it still the same case where a 512gb vs a 256 gb drive uses more flash memory chips giving it more bandwidth from the controller effectively giving you an internal raid on the drive?

Regardless if space is the concern I have no feelings on raid 0 vs a bigger drive, unless you are saving a pile of cash :)
 
it still the same case where a 512gb vs a 256 gb drive uses more flash memory chips giving it more bandwidth from the controller effectively giving you an internal raid on the drive?
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Usually.
 
thesmokingman said:
To be fair you'd have to try pretty hard to break an SSD RAID.
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Depends on the quality of his SSDs...
I have an original Intel x25-M that still runs strong to this day, and every single Samsung and Intel SSD I have still works great, but EVERY SINGLE OCZ Vertex, Vertex 2, and Agility drive I purchased for over 20 different PCs over the years has gone bad. In fact it was so bad, that the few drives that were actually still running I called up those family members and warned them they needed to clone their drives out to a new brand because it was only a short matter of time before they lost everything.

OCZ has left such bad taste in my mouth that even now that Toshiba owns the brand I still won't touch them. This even though as far as I am aware they don't share any manufacturing with old OCZ and the new drives under the OCZ brand appear to be high quality and reliable, I still won't touch them.
 
Perhaps I like to live dangerously, but... My desktop:

4x 256GB Sandisk X300s Raid0 = C:\ (OS, programs, + Steam games)
2x Seagate 1TB Raid1 = D:\ (OS + Photos Backup + movie storage)
Oracle F80 4x200GB PCIe Raid0 = E:\ (Working photo / lightroom disk)

The only issue I've had was personally done by me where I broke the primary raid array and it wouldn't boot, but I was able to fix everything. Honestly, the post / boot process is rather slow because it runs through three (oracle, intel raid, and motherboard splash) screens before it starts loading Windows. Single SSDs machines will boot faster. For me the decision was mostly financial and it has ended up working out because I'm currently implementing a home DDR infiniband network. The biggest thing regardless of what you choose to do is to have incremental redundant backups.
 
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