dual msata ssds in raid.. max out sata?

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Johnny von neumann

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I found an adapter (http://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/Dual-mSATA-SSD-to-2-5-SATA-RAID-Adapter~25SAT22MSAT) that takes 2 msatas and can raid 0 or 1 to a single sata. My question is: will I see any advantage over a single ssd? The two setups I am looking at:

1 sata samsung evo 840, which almost maxes out the sata speed (600mb/s?)

OR

2 msata evo 840s in raid 0

My question is: would the two in raid not be faster than the 1 sata because of a sata3 bottleneck?

I am trying to get the most out of the single sata3 I have on my laptop.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Darkbreeze
No RAID configuration can exceed the hardware capability of the standard or the slowest device in the configuration. If you are already at the max read/write speeds, in actuality and not just according to the reported connected speed standard (For example, your LAN connection might say you're connected at Gigabit speeds of 1Gbps but that doesn't mean you're actually transferring data at those speeds), then there would be no speed benefit to adding a RAID array except perhaps when using a mechanical drive. Have you used a utility to actually measure the read/write speeds with actual data?
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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If you want to get the most out of it, then buy a single SSD of larger size. Raid 0 actually slows down most users since it impacts random reads and write. it benefits sequential users though, so if you plan to edit videos with it then yes to raid0
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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No RAID configuration can exceed the hardware capability of the standard or the slowest device in the configuration. If you are already at the max read/write speeds, in actuality and not just according to the reported connected speed standard (For example, your LAN connection might say you're connected at Gigabit speeds of 1Gbps but that doesn't mean you're actually transferring data at those speeds), then there would be no speed benefit to adding a RAID array except perhaps when using a mechanical drive. Have you used a utility to actually measure the read/write speeds with actual data?
 
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Johnny von neumann

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Got it, that was what I was afraid of. I guess that I should just get 2 drives and create a spanned storage volume. Also, I don't have the hardware with me, so speed testing was not an option. Thanks for the info about raid, and for confirming my suspicion.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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I felt the need to revisit this as it now seems maybe I was wrong, and that possibly you are as well. Then again, perhaps it's theoretical. The information on the page linked to below at the Intel website indicates that in Raid0 the random reads and writes are doubled just as the sequential r/w are. Can you further explain this as it seems unlikely, even though I know hardware vendors tend to pad the specs, that Intel would blatantly claim something that would seem to be of no clear benefit to them.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-730-series.html
 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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To clarify, raid 0 slows down most home/normal users but servers or high productivity users with much higher queue depths (greater than 8) loads can benefit greatly; almost twice the IOP's and throughput even in random
You may wish to read thru Tom's analysis of Raid0 SSD's but heres the relevant page with AS-SSD benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-4.html

Thanks for asking for a more detailed explanation. :)

As for the device in your opening post, since you cant exceed the single sata3 speed which that board uses then you are limited to roughly 550Mb/s which is about the same speed that you would get with a single modern SSD drive. That board would actually slow you down to well under 500mb/s even with raid0 enabled.

Its great for when you need more space and you already have one msata ssd though :)
 
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Johnny von neumann

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Yeah, that is what I thought happened. I guess it makes sense, if raid splits up a large file (HD Movie for example) into chunks of a certain size, smaller files, such as a small text document, probably wouldn't be sped up as much, because even if it was split once, it would still take longer than if the image could be split multiple times. Cool! Thanks again.

I am probably going to order the new Samsung 850 evo.
 
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