I want to build a new budget oriented gaming PC and I want to have a fast drive for the operating system and my most used games. Would it be faster to buy an older SSD on eBay for around $30 or should I pick up a lot of 5 160gb wd blues for $20 from Craigslist and do a raid 1 array. I have heard that data stripping on raid one can be really fast.
Which is faster? An SSD or raid 0
- Thread starter Ryan_286
- Start date
Solution
- Jun 17, 2015
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buy a ssd that will delivr as low as 400 megabytes per second read
add a single hard disk for storage
less drives are easier to handle, less noise, less power consumption, less bays inside the case filled, more storage space and more peace of mind when one of those used hard disks decides to die and gives you headache trying to figure out why the raid is not working
raid this days has become alot less common thanks to ssd, few people are doing raid, even on ssds
for most a ssd is more than enough for os load speed, for apps load speed
add a single hard disk for storage
less drives are easier to handle, less noise, less power consumption, less bays inside the case filled, more storage space and more peace of mind when one of those used hard disks decides to die and gives you headache trying to figure out why the raid is not working
raid this days has become alot less common thanks to ssd, few people are doing raid, even on ssds
for most a ssd is more than enough for os load speed, for apps load speed
getochkn
Polypheme
- Jul 2, 2006
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And if any one of those drives dies in the RAID array, and it all goes down. Considering they are 160GB they are probably 8 years old or so since they were even made. A used SSD is a gamble as well. It could have been written to death and used and abused.
Games on a SSD don't really benefit a lot. Once it's loaded, it's loaded. If you're playing a team based game, usually a countdown before the game starts anyways, so the fact that you're in first doesn't mean anything if there is a 60 second countdown timer before the game starts anyways.
Games on a SSD don't really benefit a lot. Once it's loaded, it's loaded. If you're playing a team based game, usually a countdown before the game starts anyways, so the fact that you're in first doesn't mean anything if there is a 60 second countdown timer before the game starts anyways.
- Jun 17, 2015
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i bought a 160 gbs hard disk when it was new in 2005
not 8 years, 12
i forgot to mention another reason against a multiple hard disk raid 0, less sata power cables and less sata data cables, those cables are small, but handle 10 of those, the psu must be good, most of them usually have only 4 sata power cables, most motherboard will not do a raid array, forget one with 5 hard disks
so you will need a raid driver installed on a pci express slot on your motheroard
the heat those old hard disks produce, well the case will become a room heater
talking about raid 0, each of those will offer at best 90 megabytes per second read(supposedly is 120 for sata 1 hard disk but remember those are old drives, they don't do that much in reality), per 5, that is 450 megabytes per second more or less, ideally
to much hassle to match a 40 dollars ssd of the same size
i would better buy a 240 gbs ssd and a 2 tb wd hard disk, or a toshiba hard disk and have peace of mind
i god a 120 kingston uv400 and a toshiba 1 tb hard disk, couldn't be happier, the hard disk is remarkably silent, i think it must be it is only used as games library storage
don't forget to do backups of the hard disk, the ssd should be used for os and for 1 or 2 games, nothing more, the rest should be backed up outside the pc
not 8 years, 12
i forgot to mention another reason against a multiple hard disk raid 0, less sata power cables and less sata data cables, those cables are small, but handle 10 of those, the psu must be good, most of them usually have only 4 sata power cables, most motherboard will not do a raid array, forget one with 5 hard disks
so you will need a raid driver installed on a pci express slot on your motheroard
the heat those old hard disks produce, well the case will become a room heater
talking about raid 0, each of those will offer at best 90 megabytes per second read(supposedly is 120 for sata 1 hard disk but remember those are old drives, they don't do that much in reality), per 5, that is 450 megabytes per second more or less, ideally
to much hassle to match a 40 dollars ssd of the same size
i would better buy a 240 gbs ssd and a 2 tb wd hard disk, or a toshiba hard disk and have peace of mind
i god a 120 kingston uv400 and a toshiba 1 tb hard disk, couldn't be happier, the hard disk is remarkably silent, i think it must be it is only used as games library storage
don't forget to do backups of the hard disk, the ssd should be used for os and for 1 or 2 games, nothing more, the rest should be backed up outside the pc
- Sep 13, 2010
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Ah nostalgia, RAID 0 HDDs.
I had a 4 disk RAID 0 array (15K SCSI Cheetahs on an Adaptec 39160 SCSI RAID adapter) for my OS years ago and then Intel came along and crushed it with an 80GB X25-M, my first (and most expensive SSD at around $500). That SSD is still humming along as an Adobe scratch disk.
I had a 4 disk RAID 0 array (15K SCSI Cheetahs on an Adaptec 39160 SCSI RAID adapter) for my OS years ago and then Intel came along and crushed it with an 80GB X25-M, my first (and most expensive SSD at around $500). That SSD is still humming along as an Adobe scratch disk.
geofelt
Titan
- Oct 9, 2006
- 54,290
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define "faster"
Are you talking a particular raid-0 coded sequential app?
windows performance depends on low latency which is 50x faster on a ssd than a hard drive.
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
In fact, if your block of data were to be spanned on two drives, random times would be greater.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.
Are you talking a particular raid-0 coded sequential app?
windows performance depends on low latency which is 50x faster on a ssd than a hard drive.
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
In fact, if your block of data were to be spanned on two drives, random times would be greater.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.
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