SSD RAID or new SSD?

[jimthebob]

So I posted a short while ago about Samsung SSD's and competitor options but I wasn't able to convince myself of a solid option. So now, I'm curious; what would be my best option? I currently have a 120gb Samsung 850 Evo that I have to watch the space on. Should I snag a second 120gb Evo and RAID0 them or just go with a 250gb or 500gb Evo and call it a day? Options welcome!

 

[GotNoRice]

820 evo? Do you mean 840 or 850 evo? If it's an 840 evo i'd get a new drive for sure, as they had some pretty bad issues. I believe the issues were mostly fixed by firmware updates, but still. Also, do you have any options which don't involve you going with a TLC based Evo drive? If you have the option to upgrade to an MLC drive (The Pro drives from Samsung), I would do that without hesitation.

Of course, there are other factors. If you get a new drive, do you have the choice of selling the old drive to recoup some of your costs? If you go with Raid-0, I would make 100% sure that both drives have the same firmware first.

 

[lilfiend]

I would go for a single new drive over two older ssd's in raid 0. You should be able to sell your old ssd too to help with the cost of a new ssd.

As for TLC vs MLC if you're not write heavy it doesn't make a huge difference.

 

[Brian_B]

Bigger drive, unless backups aren't an issue and it's not a big deal if you lose everything on the SSDs in the event of a drive failure.

 

[jimthebob]

Bigger drive, unless backups aren't an issue and it's not a big deal if you lose everything on the SSDs in the event of a drive failure.

Backup's aren't an issue, my PC backs up to my server weekly.

820 evo? Do you mean 840 or 850 evo? If it's an 840 evo i'd get a new drive for sure, as they had some pretty bad issues. I believe the issues were mostly fixed by firmware updates, but still. Also, do you have any options which don't involve you going with a TLC based Evo drive? If you have the option to upgrade to an MLC drive (The Pro drives from Samsung), I would do that without hesitation.

Of course, there are other factors. If you get a new drive, do you have the choice of selling the old drive to recoup some of your costs? If you go with Raid-0, I would make 100% sure that both drives have the same firmware first.

I meant 850 Evo, correct the OP.

 

[Brian_B]

Well if backups aren't an issue RAID0 or JBOD is an easy way to get more capacity. I don't usually recommend it because of the lack of reliability, but if you got a backup plan in place and are comfortable with it, it's probably your cheapest option.

Could probably use something like Storage Spaces and get a bit of redundancy in there as well, but it may take a couple more drives.

 

[capt_cope]

Backup's aren't an issue, my PC backs up to my server weekly.



I meant 850 Evo, correct the OP.

It's really not worth going the raid 0 route imo. I did that a while back (when Intel 520s we're still the hot ssd) and I didn't notice any real gains from the improved sequential read/write speeds. I wish I hadn't wasted my money on another small (120gb) drive that I'm using as a glorified thumb drive now. I've since replaced those 520s with a Toshiba nvme drive for the OS (and the very few programs that benefit from stupid fast storage) and a 500gb cheap SSD for my games (I think it's a SanDisk x400) that I'm about to upgrade to a 1tb SSD. It's been my experience that most programs see a decent improvement going from spinning disk to SSD, but any further gains are minimal.

 

[rive22]

What is your usage? Game Box? I'd keep OS/Apps on the 120 and buy a new whatever size for all of your games and keep them separate. Assuming regular media files are on networked HDD's. Whatever you decide though, you can't really go wrong.

There are plenty of tasks that can reap the benefits of RAID 0 SSD's but usually one knows for certain before hand if disk throughput is bottlenecking their workload. If it's a game box there's been reviews that RAID0 SSD doesn't offer any benefit though at this time. I suspect that will change in the future as games get larger and will require faster throughput. although by that time it's possible faster NVMe will have taken over and will be fast enough putting us in the same boat as today.

 

[bigdogchris]

So I posted a short while ago about Samsung SSD's and competitor options but I wasn't able to convince myself of a solid option. So now, I'm curious; what would be my best option? I currently have a 120gb Samsung 850 Evo that I have to watch the space on. Should I snag a second 120gb Evo and RAID0 them or just go with a 250gb or 500gb Evo and call it a day? Options welcome!

If you have to ask if you need something, then you don't, because you would know if you did. Other than big synthetics you won't notice a difference except if a drive dies and you notice all your data is gone. There are very few scenarios where people need that much sequential bandwidth.

Just go with an SSD that has capacity for your OS and applications, and throw in a hard drive for storage non-critical stuff like images, documents, videos, photos, etc.

 

[westrock2000]

If money is an issue, the RAID0.....assuming you have a backup solution. Otherwise go 1 big. You won't notice between 500MB/s and 800MB/s in real life. So raw speed isn't that big of a deal.

But this is what I have been doing. Adding 240-256GB drives as time goes by and they go on sale for cheap. However the issue is I'm running out of ports to use. I didn't realize only certain ports can use the Intel Raid software. (and I don't mean the "extra" SATA ports off to the side, like the additonal Marvel controller).