Raid 0 -or- 2x separate drives for OS & storage? Which is faster?

gcaver

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Apr 20, 2010
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I am building a new gaming computer & was going to use 2x SSD. I do NOT need much storage space at all (I think 2x 16gb SSD may even cut it). I was planning on having Win7 & 1-2 games on SSD only, with the rest of my crap on a larger standard HDD.

My question is -

What would give me better performance - having the 2 SSD's together in a Raid 0 with the OS and the games all on the array? Or having 2 separate SSD's, with one having only OS loaded on it and the other having the game sw??

Thank you so much for any informed answers!!
 

sub mesa

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2 SSDs in RAID0 would give you the highest performance. But it would mean you cannot use TRIM. That means you can use only part of the full capacity of your SSD if you want it to remain fast over time, by creating a smaller partition than the full capacity and leaving a portion unused like 20GB.

So the easiest solution would probably be 2 SSDs so you can use TRIM.
 

sub mesa

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Difficult to say, in theory it can be twice as fast. But as SSDs are already very fast, making it even faster won't have the same effect as going from HDD to SSD, which is about 100 times faster alone.

It could also be that your CPU is maxing out and now the biggest bottleneck instead.