RAID 0 Performance Compared to Single HDD and SSD

[Mad Cat]

Hi,


I currently have a WD Black 1TB drive that has only 140GB free, and I am looking to upgrade. My system have an i7 920 running at stock* on an ASUS P6T Deluxe with 6GB of RAM and an XFX Radeon 4890. My i7 and 4890 are good enough for games, but I need more drive space and would like my desktop experience to feel a bit snappier. The two options I am looking at are a RAID 0 using two WD 1TB RE3 drives and a dedicated card or a 128GB SSD. I have done some research on RAID 0s and as far as I can tell a RAID 0 has a slightly slower response time but faster read and write times, as seen here. I have also heard that three drives in a RAID 5 would be just as fast and worth the cost. However, as we all know on [H], benchmarks do not equal real world results. Therefore, I would like to here your real world experience with RAID 0s and if they are worth the extra cost. My budget is $500, and I am willing to wait for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Few notes: I have seen the WD 1TB RE3 drives for as little as $110 each on Newegg. Also, I have no idea what to look for in a RAID card and the few reviews I found weren't very helpful for a RAID noob such as myself.

*I know an i7 at stock is heresy, but I have heat issues in my room and cannot overclock at this time. I may try this winter if my dorm is cool enough.


Thanks in advance!

 

[john4200]

I suggest looking at your 800+ GB of data and seeing which data you access the most and with what sort of access pattern (mostly read, mostly write, mostly sequential, mostly random, etc.).

It is difficult to make a suggestion without knowing more about your usage patterns.

Also, do you have a backup of that data?

 

[MrGuvernment]

if you go raid 0 how do you plan to backup your data........


raid 0 has faster seek and raw data times, it is when you get into 3-4 or more drives that seek times can actually go up but raw speed is faster of course.

3 drives in raid 5 wont be just as fast, raid 5 unless you get a true raid card, being $300+ will suffer using any onboard raid, where as raid 0 and 1 have no overhead so onboard intel matrix raid performs well.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

For $500 I would get a 128-160gb SSD for the OS and use any left over funds on as big a HDD as you can find.

 

[Rossi~]

I have just invested in a 60Gb Vertex2 (OS+Apps) and 2x1Tb Caviar Black drives in RAID-0 (for mass data), I'm VERY impressed and happy with it.
OS & apps are very snappy to load, games load much quicker than the velocirapter drive i had before, importing/exporting of data, ableton tracks and searches also have an impressive increase in speed.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1550971

 

[Old Hippie]

80GB SSD for your OS and another 1TB mechanical drive for storage.

 

[Mad Cat]

Thanks for the replies!

I suggest looking at your 800+ GB of data and seeing which data you access the most and with what sort of access pattern (mostly read, mostly write, mostly sequential, mostly random, etc.).

It is difficult to make a suggestion without knowing more about your usage patterns.

I use my computer for games and general internet use. I'm not incredibly familiar with those I/O types, but I'd guess it's random I/O for most stuff with sequential read for loading the OS and sequential write for loading games.

if you go raid 0 how do you plan to backup your data........

I plan on using my current 1TB drive for data archiving. I keep the vast majority of my important files on my school laptop and on the school network drive, so I only have a few excel sheets that are indispensable, and half of those are for Eve .

For $500 I would get a 128-160gb SSD for the OS and use any left over funds on as big a HDD as you can find.

My far off future goal is to have 256-512GB in SSD space with several HDDs in a RAID doing what you just said, but I can only afford a little bit right now. Getting the RAID first would increase my storage space by far more than the SSD would, although I am currently looking at what I can remove if I got the SSD instead.

I have just invested in a 60Gb Vertex2 (OS+Apps) and 2x1Tb Caviar Black drives in RAID-0 (for mass data), I'm VERY impressed and happy with it.
OS & apps are very snappy to load, games load much quicker than the velocirapter drive i had before, importing/exporting of data, ableton tracks and searches also have an impressive increase in speed.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1550971

I read through that thread and am quite interested. First, do I need to do a complete reinstall of Win 7 on the SSD, and then how would I remove the current one from my HDD? Also, how did you get the Caviar Black drives to stay in a RAID? I read that the consumer grade WD drives dropped from RAIDs due to the deep recovery mode. Were you able to find a way around this or are they simply old enough to not have that "feature" yet?

 

[Rossi~]

I read through that thread and am quite interested. First, do I need to do a complete reinstall of Win 7 on the SSD, and then how would I remove the current one from my HDD? Also, how did you get the Caviar Black drives to stay in a RAID? I read that the consumer grade WD drives dropped from RAIDs due to the deep recovery mode. Were you able to find a way around this or are they simply old enough to not have that "feature" yet?

It's best to have a fresh install of W7 on the SSD, that way the partition will be aligned properly (Google SSD partition alignment). Re-install apps from scrach and copy documents across from your other HDD.

I wasn't aware of any problems with the Caviar Black drives dropping out of RAID, i just set it up via the ICH10R (Intel Matrix Storage), slapped them in RAID-0 and away i went, has been working fine.