SSD Question

[Ramaddil]

So I finally bought a SSD for my gaming rig which is:

Case Thermaltake ArmorPlus(Armor+) VH6000BWS
PSU Corsair CMPSU-850TX (850 Watt)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H
CPU AMD Phenom II X6 1090T@3.8Ghz
CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-D14
RAM G.Skill Ripjaw 8GB (4X2GB)
GPU Radeon HD 5850 1GB

I have a little more money burning a whole in my pocket and wanna buy something else. Now I use this for Gaming and Ripping primarily. I play alot of different games but there is a few I play more often than others and I was thinking about placing them on my new SSD but it would take up alot of room on this new SSD I got:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148441

I have another 120 dollars to play with and was thinking about doubling my order and getting a second one and possibly putting them into a Raid 0 array to increase speed and disk size. My question is this.... I have done some research but the information is all over the place about SSD's about lifespan and the effects of running a raid on SSD's etc.

I want to know and hopefully someone can educate me on these questions

#1. Will running 2 SSD's particularly the one I ordered decrease the life span of the SSD's and will it be more of a risk of the array failing with SSD's

#2. How much performance increase can be had by Raiding 2 SSD's

#3. Finally assuming that it does not seriously decrease the lifespan or make it the drives more prone to possible failure.... Would I need to buy a Controller Card or could I just use my Motherboard to place these in a Raid.


Thanks

 

[elbweb]

#1. Will running 2 SSD's particularly the one I ordered decrease the life span of the SSD's and will it be more of a risk of the array failing with SSD's

No. The lifespan of an SSD is dependent upon writes (reads do not affect the lifespan of an SSD) of a sector. Theoretically this should increase their lifespan since you have half the number of read/writes (since two drives are sharing the same amount of work).

#2. How much performance increase can be had by Raiding 2 SSD's

Mostly depends on the controller, and the benchmark. The performance dependent on IOPS (loading windows, programs, lots of little reads/writes) will not see much performance at all. Larger reads and writes will see up to double the performance, assuming your controller can handle it, which as far as I can see, it does (using your motherboard's controller).

#3. Finally assuming that it does not seriously decrease the lifespan or make it the drives more prone to possible failure.... Would I need to buy a Controller Card or could I just use my Motherboard to place these in a Raid.

As answered above, your current controller has more than enough bandwidth to give you all you can get out of these two in Raid 0. There is no need to get another controller. If you want to have Raid 5, or 3 drives, or anything like that, then a new controller would be needed to gain any performance. But for two, you are fine.

 

[msny]

No, this is better solution, then SSD.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1603950

 

[TwistedAegis]

If you place your SSDs in RAID you will not have TRIM, which could potentially lead to performance degradation over time.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM"]TRIM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[elbweb]

No, this is better solution, then SSD.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1603950

"Better" is too subjective a term for this. Obviously a ram drive is faster, but it also is much more annoying to make use of, and has huge performance problems on the load/save of the drive.

Every time you start your computer you have to reload the ram drive, sand save the contents every time you close it. It is great for temporary files, but not for large installs because of this. I don't personally use one, but a friend has 24GB and 8GB of that is a page file for his SSD and that works beautifully. He also has a 4GB drive setup as the drive where his temporary internet files are stored. Takes longer on every load of a page (since it isn't persistent), but works perfectly while the computer is kept on.

 

[Old Hippie]

If you place your SSDs in RAID you will not have TRIM, which could potentially lead to performance degradation over time.

It could, but if you do a little research on the guys that are actually doing it (like me) you'll find there has been no problem.

 

[msny]

"Better" is too subjective a term for this. Obviously a ram drive is faster, but it also is much more annoying to make use of, and has huge performance problems on the load/save of the drive.

Every time you start your computer you have to reload the ram drive, sand save the contents every time you close it. It is great for temporary files, but not for large installs because of this. I don't personally use one, but a friend has 24GB and 8GB of that is a page file for his SSD and that works beautifully. He also has a 4GB drive setup as the drive where his temporary internet files are stored. Takes longer on every load of a page (since it isn't persistent), but works perfectly while the computer is kept on.

Do the research, files, can be loaded into ram, saved, and loaded back
to disk automatically.This comes in handy for things like saved games and
confgurations.

Did you bother to read the thread?

An SSD crawls in comparison to running from RAM in the same programs.

Since I have both, I speak from experience.

 

[Old Hippie]

Since I have both, I speak from experience.

Me to and so can I.

Because the RAM disk is created for faster access from data permanently stored elsewhere and is re-created on the RAM disk when the system reboots, this creates a storage/power interrupt problem when/where everything is lost.

RAM disks have been around for awhile but have not found wide acceptance with consumers because of it's inherent faults.

While it is faster, we're talking about some comsumers than don't feel an SSD is worth the upgrade because "my computer's not that much faster" than their mechanical HDDs, much less having to contend to easy data loss.

I'm pretty much a computer enthusist with enough money to satisfy my curiosity and I don't use a RAM drive anymore.

More power to ya though!