• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

SSDs in RAID 0, performance over time?

G

GHarris

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2006
Messages
178
Hi all,

I have two 160GB Intel 320 SSDs. I plan on using them in RAID 0 on an X58 motherboard for a good combination of speed and capacity. This setup is going to come into its own when the 11.5 version of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology comes out with support for TRIM on RAID 0.

But that won't happen for perhaps a few months yet (think I saw Q2 2012 mentioned somewhere). In the meantime, should I just use the drives as two separate SSDs, e.g. perhaps with the OS and software on one and some on-the-fly-loading-heavy games (like Arma 2) on the other? Or should I set them up as RAID 0 drives now?

How much real-world performance does an untrimmed SSD lose over time? Is it likely to be a lot over the course of a few months? Am I likely to encounter other issues besides reduced performance until TRIM support arrives? And when the new RST version comes out will I be able to say "go forth and TRIM up this pre-existing RAID" or will I need to start from scratch with a secure erase? I appreciate that the last question might be impossible to answer in advance, but since I haven't used RST before I wondered if others who have used it with a single SSD might be able to shed some light on what options there currently are to say "go and TRIM the heck out of this SSD now please", as some kind of indicator.

If I have to secure erase and reformat when the time comes I can live with it, so I guess the thing I'm most wondering about right now is whether or not to use these drives in RAID 0 yet.

I'd appreciate any advice you folks can offer.
 
The performance degradation is completely based on the workload you are putting the drives too.

No one knows how well the Intel RST 11.5 is going to work, and chances are it's gonna have some bugs when it first releases as almost everything with SSD on the first iteration has problems. I think you should wait it out unless you want to be on the vanguard.

But, If you are comfortable with backing up and restoring your C:\, then you might as well go for raid 0 now. You can always do a secure format if the drives slow down and restore your C:\ from backup.
 
I have two Intel 40GBs as my OS + main program drives. They have been running for more than three quarters. I created the Array of 64GB leaving the remainder free to give the drive breathing room.

I have W7 + some core programs installed on it. Have a small amount of pagefile on this volume, and the rest on a HD raid. Google caches etc. are mapped to the HD raid volumes. My usage has stabilized around 40GB leaving 24GB of formatted disk (40GB total free)

I ran some performance tests on it a few months ago, and it was getting the expected speeds. The Intel SSD tool box has the E9 Media wearout indicator at 100 :D on both drives. Host writes are 788GB on one and 882GB on the second (surprised by the difference).

Originally I had planned to do periodic maintenance but never had the need to do it.
 
I have the crucial m4 2x64gb in raid0, I dont notice much difference between single ssd vs raid0. nontheless getting two small drive in raid0 is cheaper than large capacity ssd.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top