Two separate SSDs?

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Geryon

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I'm just pondering, in terms of application performance, how would using two SSDs as separate, dedicated OS and application drives compare to putting both OS and apps on a single SSD? (Assuming Windows 7 for an OS).

Any thoughts?

I'm kinda wondering if the OS accessing the same drive that the apps are running from can have a negative effect on the apps, such that splitting them up would allow concurrent OS and app drive operations and improve performance. Probably noob thinking there but it doesn't hurt to ask :D

Edit: I imagine if you were buying two SSDs you'd be better off using RAID0 but of course, you lose TRIM support that way.
 
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Geryon said:
I'm just pondering, in terms of application performance, how would using two SSDs as separate, dedicated OS and application drives compare to putting both OS and apps on a single SSD? (Assuming Windows 7 for an OS).

Any thoughts?

I'm kinda wondering if the OS accessing the same drive that the apps are running from can have a negative effect on the apps, such that splitting them up would allow concurrent OS and app drive operations and improve performance. Probably noob thinking there but it doesn't hurt to ask :D

Edit: I imagine if you were buying two SSDs you'd be better off using RAID0 but of course, you lose TRIM support that way.
Click to expand...

I don't think the OS / Apps on the same drive will do much harm, not any more then a HD would anyway. at the cost of SSDs though, my plan is to use a VR for the OS drive, and my 3x30gb vertex raid as the app / game drive
 
The biggest conflict between the OS and APPs would be due to churning the read heads for seeks (largely related to the way Windows manages the pagefile). On an SSD there are no heads and seek time is near 0ms. So no real advantage. Go ahead and put them all on one drive.
 
Why bother w/a VR for the OS? Unless you already own it... Even then, the OS will only take 10-15GB of space, might as well put it right on the 90GB SSD RAID array... The OS will benefit just as much, if not more so, from the SSD's performance than games will. Many games won't load appreciably faster on an SSD for a variety of reasons (CPU/GPU bottleneck the unpacking of textures or loading of on-screen elements, etc), but the SSD will have a big impact on just about everything you do within your OS, including menial day-to-day stuff.

Why would you even put three 30GB Vertex drives in RAID? At $100 per drive you're paying way more than you would for an 80GB X25-M...

As for the OP, if you're buying two small SSD rather than a large one due to the cost per GB, go for it... If you really want TRIM you can go ahead and use 'em as separate drives for now, but there shouldn't be any large upside to it. I'm not sure any two smaller SSD will be cheaper than a larger one of the same or similar capacity tho. Two 30GB Vertex or 40GB X25-V cost the same or more as their 60/80GB counterparts, ditto for 60/80GB vs 120/160GB, IIRC.
 
Impulse said:
Why would you even put three 30GB Vertex drives in RAID? At $100 per drive you're paying way more than you would for an 80GB X25-M...
Click to expand...

Perhaps he wants to do this because a 3x30GB vertex raid0 is more than 2x faster for reads and, depending on your controller, probably at least as fast for write than is a single 80GB X25-M? Its not always about cost...

You do lose TRIM, but if you flash to the right firmware Vertex gives you garbage collect even in Raid.
 
Yeah, I'm planning on getting a single 160GB X25-M for the moment.

I just asked the question out of interest really since I've never seen it discussed before. I mostly see lots of "Intel vs OCZ" and "RAID or TRIM?" threads around the net.
 
PigLover said:
Perhaps he wants to do this because a 3x30GB vertex raid0 is more than 2x faster for reads and, depending on your controller, probably at least as fast for write than is a single 80GB X25-M? Its not always about cost...

You do lose TRIM, but if you flash to the right firmware Vertex gives you garbage collect even in Raid.
Click to expand...

I guess that's true, altho I'd hope he has some pretty specialized needs to take advantage of those speeds.
 
Impulse said:
I guess that's true, altho I'd hope he has some pretty specialized needs to take advantage of those speeds.
Click to expand...

Hey, this is (H)arforum.com, isn't it? I didn't think people here needed a reason to go extreme :)
 
I personally think two fastass SSDs (read AND write ideally) are much more useful seperate. I use my pair of cheetahs to toss data back and forth between. I mean, being able to read at 500MB a second is cool and all I guess, but being able to unrar a 10GB rarset at 250MB a second would be much more valuable to me personally. And having my OS and apps on one of the two and games on the other. And some fast big SATA drives to dump your data onto once you're finished tossing it. I'm currently debating over going SSD or updating to newer 15k SAS drives. I have an 80GB X25-M running in my roommates rig right now, it's spiffy for sure, but the write speed still licks and it's small. Good for the OS, Flight Sim and a few apps. Hauls ass though. I just don't see the gain to striping them, aside from the added write speed. It's quite pitiful actually for large sequential transfers. I think if I were to invest heavily in SSD I'd really want them to be able to write at least 80% as fast as they read. Is this slow write:read ratio unique to Intel? Anyone?

Dustin
 
If you have a true need for high sequential write speeds then you might as well try something in OCZ's Vertex line or wait for future Micron/SandForce drives, sequential write speeds are the Achilles' heel of Intel's X25-M line (and really, the only measure by which another currently-shipping SSD can beat it, amongst the more affordable consumer-grade stuff anyway, tho that's likely to change in a couple months).
 
Intel is just handicapping the X25-M's write speeds so it doesn't cannibalize their X25-E sales. Specifically the X25-M 80Gb vs. the X25-E 64Gb.

You saw with a little firmware update they increased the write speeds on the X25-M 160Gb to 100+Mb/s IMO which isn't in "direct competition" with the E series due to its larger size.
 
Seems like an Intelesque thing to do actually. It's their right to do it if they want to I suppose, it's still a great product and I bought one knowing exactly how fast it could write.

Dustin
 
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