pathasse

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Has anyone used a Raid 0 with SSD? If so what kind of benefits, if any do you see? I would like to know if I will gain enough performance with a SSD raid that would be worth the money?
 
Solution
To that day, I think no RAID controller supports TRIM on RAID, and you cannot TRIM each drive individually because TRIM needs visibility on the file system which "does not exist" if both drive are separated. The only options to TRIM RAID drives involve loosing the data on them.

Zenthar

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To that day, I think no RAID controller supports TRIM on RAID, and you cannot TRIM each drive individually because TRIM needs visibility on the file system which "does not exist" if both drive are separated. The only options to TRIM RAID drives involve loosing the data on them.
 
Solution

Zenthar

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You are right to specify this, the problem isn't RAID in itself, it's the controllers. Therefore, it's probably just a firmware/driver issue to fix, not a technological limitation.
 

Zenthar

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It would be "safer", but I've heard people claiming they used their SSD RAID for close to a year without seeing any significant performance issues. If you are the kind of person to reformat his rig every 6-12 months, then chances are you would never notice a difference anyway.
 

pathasse

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Question: I know that the more you format a SSD the less time it will last. What kind of effect on lifespan would you see if you format 4 times a year on an Intel X-25 M. (also assume regular usage erases)
 

Zenthar

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Bingo, it might require a few more steps than just reformatting (like using a manufacturer's "factory restore" utility of some kind), but performance would be preserved. Just make sure there is a "TRIM" utility available that you can use outside of the OS so you can use it from boot (USB, CD, ...).
 

randomizer

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Most formatting utilities (not including quick format) do a zero-fill on the drive. SSDs actually need to be "one-filled" in order to be erased by software. By zero-filling an SSD, you basically cause massive slowdown until the controller erases all of the blocks that are now filled with zeroes. The best thing to do is use Secure Erase (or Sanitary_erase for OCZ drives if you want) as this essentially resets the volume bitmap maintained by the controller, telling it that all blocks are invalid and can be pre-erased. The advantage is that only the blocks containing zeroes will need to be erased, instead of every block. Check the SSD sticky in this forum for the first Anandtech article, it has a page on Secure Erase.
 

a1uc

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Using 160GB X25-M SSD WIN7 WINDOWS INDEX SCORE 7.9