ssd or 10000 raid0?

[frostypepper]

Yes, I know, yet another ssd vs the world thread...sorry.

I recently posted that my old 15k scsi drive was running so very slow on a new install of windows 7 x64. E4g1e was kind enough to give me the low down on the drive being full, windows 7 x64 not playing nice with scsi, etc.

Now I need a viable alternative for a boot drive. My steam folder and most of my games take up a huge amount of space, so they reside on a separate black caviar drive. Regular office programs, and photoshop resides on my boot drive.

Heres my options.

A ssd as a boot drive, everyone loves them. They seem to do everything but slice bread. Downside is that they are expensive for their size. A 128 Gb Crucial c300 (Ive read this is the best, not sure) is upwards to $270. I would most definitely still need a secondary drive for storage and a lot of the games.

A 10000 rpm 300 Gb recertified VelociRaptor is $110 (two would obviously be $220), I can get two and put them on a raid0 (via my GA-X48-DS5) and have around 600 Gb to put everything on. I could use my Caviar black as a dedicated backup drive.

Any thoughts? Size over performance? Anyone have any experience with these recertified VelociRaptor drives?

I am just looking for good performance in Windows 7 x64 and drive longevity. I am sort of leaning to the VelociRaptors for its superior capacity and improved performance for all programs not just whats on the boot drive.

Quick booting into the OS is nice, but not a deal breaker. When are those SLC ssd drive ever going to come down in price? Im not to hot on the life span of the MLC ssd drives.

Thanks for the help people.

 

[E4g1e]

My recommendation is to forget about those 300GB Velociraptors: Their sequential transfer speed is only slightly faster than an early-model 1TB Caviar Black, and noticeably slower than most of the current generation 1TB 7200rpm drives.

 

[frostypepper]

Thanks again for the help E4g1e. You know I had a friend mention the exact same thing. Do you think I can get close to the performance I got out of my scsi drive with a caviar black raid in windows 7 x64?

Do you think perhaps I should use a raid 0 and short stroke it?

 

[E4g1e]

Thanks again for the help E4g1e. You know I had a friend mention the exact same thing. Do you think I can get close to the performance I got out of my scsi drive with a caviar black raid in windows 7 x64?

Do you think perhaps I should use a raid 0 and short stroke it?

I cannot recommend a RAID 0 array as your only hard drive volume. This is because SATA RAID 0 does a relatively poor job of simultaneous reads and writes although reads or writes are faster. SATA, after all, is still only a half-duplex bus compared to SCSI or SAS. If you must RAID a system drive, go with RAID 1.

 

[frostypepper]

I used to have a raid0 back in the day when pata drives were the only game in town. Since I have been sporting the scsi drive I have sorta lost touch with performance storage.
What would be your suggestion then E4g1e? Im open minded to anything as long as I can get some performance out of a x64 bit system.
Also...isnt a raid1 just mirrored drives and not stripped like in a raid0?

 

[E4g1e]

I used to have a raid0 back in the day when pata drives were the only game in town. Since I have been sporting the scsi drive I have sorta lost touch with performance storage.
What would be your suggestion then E4g1e? Im open minded to anything as long as I can get some performance out of a x64 bit system.
Also...isnt a raid1 just mirrored drives and not stripped like in a raid0?

Yes, RAID 1 is mirrored.

What I stated in my previous post refers to using only a single RAID 0 array with no other drive volumes in the same system. (Meaning that all of the hard drives in your system are striped together as a single volume, with no backups or auxiliary hard drives whatsoever.) That actually causes more wear and tear on the hard drives, which in turn increases the risk of losing all of your data by a factor of this many drives. What this previous sentence means is that if just one drive in that RAID 0 array goes bad (dies), all of the data in that ENTIRE RAID 0 array is permanently lost, and is often nearly impossible to recover without the aid of an astronomically expensive recovery service (priced in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, or five to six digit figures, per incident).

 

[frostypepper]

I see what you are saying now. I would most definitely have a backup solution; most likely just use whats in place already. Trust me, I have already felt the sting of the failed IBM deathstar array.
I was thinking perhaps 2 black caviars raid0 short stroked with a 300 gig boot section, the secondary partition for games. and my already in place 500 gig black caviar as a dedicated backup for the boot drive.
Not sure if the raid is worth the hassle or not.

 

[PTNL]

Go with the SSD for OS and apps. Add a mechanical drive to hold pics, music, etc.

I noticed a significant improvement after changing out my Raptor RAID-0 array for a single 80 GB Intel SSD. Night-and-day difference.

As for the space difference, it hasn't been much of an issue. I've got the few games on there I regularly play, plus some very large developer tools, and still have about 20 GB free. I may replace with a 160 GB Intel SSD in the future, but that would be more to use the 80 GB as the OS drive in a HTPC build.

 

[frostypepper]

Ive thought hard about a ssd, and I would love to have one but its about 400 bucks for a 160Gb drive. My steam folder alone usually hovers around 100Gb, a x64 OS is apparently going to take 30Gb. Not much overhead for impulse and its games, sc2, etc. I would end up pushing the games to a secondary hardrive anyway. Im at a loss and need a hug.

 

[PTNL]

Ive thought hard about a ssd, and I would love to have one but its about 400 bucks for a 160Gb drive. My steam folder alone usually hovers around 100Gb, a x64 OS is apparently going to take 30Gb. Not much overhead for impulse and its games, sc2, etc. I would end up pushing the games to a secondary hardrive anyway. Im at a loss and need a hug.

The size of drive you need is a subjective call, and I wouldn't look at a long-running desktop installation as a good metric of what you currently require. The question you really need to focus on is "Do you really play each of those games consistently enough to keep them installed?" Might be time to audit your installed app list, and decide which can be removed and optionally archive the save game files. Additionally, the 80 GB drive I mentioned is roughly $200.

As for the purchase of the SSD drive... Yes, there is a significant price difference. You're paying for performance versus capacity. But it's not just a snappier OS you'll see, but rather snappier performance with all installed apps on the SSD. This is one of those expenses that would only make you cry once. Your call to make, but you have my thoughts now as I evaluated over a year ago on much of what you're considering in this thread.

 

[E4g1e]

The size of drive you need is a subjective call, and I wouldn't look at a long-running desktop installation as a good metric of what you currently require. The question you really need to focus on is "Do you really play each of those games consistently enough to keep them installed?" Might be time to audit your installed app list, and decide which can be removed and optionally archive the save game files. Additionally, the 80 GB drive I mentioned is roughly $200.

As for the purchase of the SSD drive... Yes, there is a significant price difference. You're paying for performance versus capacity. But it's not just a snappier OS you'll see, but rather snappier performance with all installed apps on the SSD. This is one of those expenses that would only make you cry once. Your call to make, but you have my thoughts now as I evaluated over a year ago on much of what you're considering in this thread.

Actually, the OP clearly prefers SLC SSDs if he were to go the SSD route. That $200 80GB SSD is an MLC unit. However, the deficiencies of MLC SSDs are partially offset by the TRIM feature on most of them. Unfortunately, if you're going to use an SSD as part of a RAID array (not to be confused with using that SSD as a non-RAID drive connected to the same controller as other hard drives in RAID array(s)), TRIM support is currently disabled because the currently available version of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver does not support TRIM in RAIDed SSDs. And since AHCI support is required for the TRIM feature in an SSD to function correctly, this means that the SATA RAID controller must be set to AHCI or RAID but the SSD itself not RAIDed together with any other drive connected to the same controller. (Too bad some of the earlier Intel RAID ICHs do not support the use of non-RAID devices when the controller is set to RAID.)

 

[PTNL]

Actually, the OP clearly prefers SLC SSDs if he were to go the SSD route. That $200 80GB SSD is an MLC unit. However, the deficiencies of MLC SSDs are partially offset by the TRIM feature on most of them. Unfortunately, if you're going to use an SSD as part of a RAID array (not to be confused with using that SSD as a non-RAID drive connected to the same controller as other hard drives in RAID array(s)), TRIM support is currently disabled because the currently available version of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver does not support TRIM in RAIDed SSDs. And since AHCI support is required for the TRIM feature in an SSD to function correctly, this means that the SATA RAID controller must be set to AHCI or RAID but the SSD itself not RAIDed together with any other drive connected to the same controller. (Too bad some of the earlier Intel RAID ICHs do not support the use of non-RAID devices when the controller is set to RAID.)

While the overview was not necessary, it does emphasize a contradiction going on. Quality SLC's are targeted more toward server/network environments with a higher volume of I/O. And while the OP does admin a preference to SLC vs. MLC, it's been weighed against desktop-grade mechanical hard drives in a RAID-0 array. This is also supported by the 160 GB price quote of $400 that the OP mentions (ie: the approximate price for an Intel 160 GB MLC SSD).

Just too many apples-to-oranges comparisons going on. At this point, I think the OP just needs to state his budget and actual OS drive size requirements -- let that be the guiding factor, instead of cross-market feature comparisons.

 

[frostypepper]

Apples to oranges comparisons indeed, so many different types of storage and so many different uses for each.

I guess my budget sits around $200 to $300, I would like at least a min 100Gb boot + 300Gb storage/games or preferred setup of 300+Gb performance boot/apps/games (I have a 500Gb drive already for backups and ghost images)

After E4g1e gave me the much appreciated heads up on the velociraptor 300Gb, I started crawling the forums to figure out why the 300Gb wasn't that great. He was right and the performance wasn't spectacular compared to a caviar black.

I did read that a 600Gb velociraptor is much faster than the older 300Gb. Could this be my magic bullet? It falls within my price range, doesn't need a expensive external controller and its read/write delay is 7/3 ms respectively.
Im used to my scsi access time being 5ms so its not too far off as opposed to a Black's access time of 12ms.

The size is good and I don't think I even need to make a short stroke partition as its performance is more or less consistent as you get closer to the inside of the spindle.

Thoughts?

 

[PTNL]

Tom's Hardware had an interesting review on that drive. Probably the first two pages and the last 3 pages would be of particular interest to you. From what you're looking for and at the price point, the 600 GB Raptor sounds like a good fit.

 

[frostypepper]

I believe Im sold, the 600Gb velociraptor is what I think to be the best solution for the time being. That is until consumer SLC ssd drives drop in price.

I know that a caviar or a F3 would reach somewhat close to this performance, I would rather have the speed than size.

I have another computer devoted to all my grunt work and storage anyway.

E4g1e, you pointing me away from the older 300 Gb velociraptor was invaluable. Thank you kindly.
PTNL thank you as well for your input, you two helped me out immensely.