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SSD Question Raid 0 or bigger drive?

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ssnyder28

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I notice everyone saying "Just get a bigger drive because the performance is almost equal." I would like to know which is better if price is equal. It seems raid 0 is the obvious choice since its faster (I don't care if I feel the difference), unless I'm missing something? Is it difficult to raid these or something?

Isn't 2 64 gb M4's in raid 0 better than one 128 gb m4?
 
It seems raid 0 is the obvious choice since its faster
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It's only faster at large sequential reads and writes. These are rarely done in most applications so you generally only see the difference in benchmarks.

Isn't 2 64 gb M4's in raid 0 better than one 128 gb m4?
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Not really in the real world. I would get the 128GB. Heck I would get the 256GB when it hits $200 US again like it did this weekend at Amazon and Tiger Direct.
 
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In addition, the larger SSDs tend to be faster than smaller ones because of the way they internally manage the memory chips. With near instantaneous access speeds, there really isn't a reason to RAID SSDs unless you plan to move around really big files a lot, or like to look at benchmark numbers.
 
Plus you have no TRIM in RAID.

Seems like RAID adds a completely unnecessary level of complexity.

And doesn't it essentially double your chance of failure?
 
ssnyder28 said:
(I don't care if I feel the difference)?
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If there isn't any perceptible difference (and as an OS drive stripe there often isn't), why would you add the additional point of failure? All current SSD's are essentially RAID0 internally, they stripe the data across all the internal NAND die. That is why larger SSD's (more NAND die) are very often faster than their same, smaller versions. RAID0'ng the drives can offer more STR benefit, but that is of extremely little benefit in general use, especially on an OS drive.
 
Forceman said:
In addition, the larger SSDs tend to be faster than smaller ones because of the way they internally manage the memory chips. With near instantaneous access speeds, there really isn't a reason to RAID SSDs unless you plan to move around really big files a lot, or like to look at benchmark numbers.
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+1

Bigger drives have better performance across the board. Where the SSD RAID 0 wins.. it's not by much... when it loses.. it loses pretty hard.
 
ssnyder28 said:
I notice everyone saying "Just get a bigger drive because the performance is almost equal." I would like to know which is better if price is equal. It seems raid 0 is the obvious choice since its faster (I don't care if I feel the difference), unless I'm missing something? Is it difficult to raid these or something?

Isn't 2 64 gb M4's in raid 0 better than one 128 gb m4?
Click to expand...

Nope, a 128gb m4 is significantly faster than a single 64gb. You see significant performance improvement up until 256gb. It's not worth the hassle for RAID at 64GB for minimum gain.
 
Alright thank you for all the feedback

Lets say the drives have equal speeds, maybe compare 120 or 128 raid 0 vs 240 or 256 single. Is the only downside not having TRIM? Is it a huge pain to setup, is there a much larger failure rate in raid 0?

I just feel the difference may not be preceptible now, but who knows how much benefit it will offer in a year from now.

Based on the suggestions I'll probably just get a 128 or 256 for now and possibly raid them later if a substantial benefit can be reached from it which doesn't appear to be relevant now.
 
RAID 0 advantages:
- Higher sequential read/writes but seriously, in what applications can you tell the difference between 500MB/s and 1000MB/s sequential speeds?

RAID 0 disadvantages:
- No TRIM
- If one drive fails you lose all your data, so it's exactly double the failure rate of a single drive
- Need to set it up

The first two are absolute deal breakers IMO.
 
I just feel the difference may not be preceptible now, but who knows how much benefit it will offer in a year from now.
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Well maybe when applications load their entire data set into memory when you open them. I do not expect that to happen until all applications are 64 bit and the minimal system is one that has 16+ GB of ram.

Based on the suggestions I'll probably just get a 128 or 256 for now and possibly raid them later if a substantial benefit can be reached from it which doesn't appear to be relevant now.
Click to expand...

Good plan.
 
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