Hard Drive setup

[apalmer15]

Hello! I am somewhat new to building computers and I was hoping I could get a few questions answered.

I was wondering what people would suggest in terms of using a solid state drive (expensive) versus RAIDing normal drives.

Here is my understanding on the subject, correct me if I am wrong:

I want to put my operating system and essential software on a 30GB solid state drive, and then RAID two 1TB drives together so that the same data is on each drive but it runs twice as fast. Is this possible? Is this a good idea? Would you have any other suggestions or things to watch out for?

I appreciate any help you could give me. Budget isn't really a big deal right now, just as long as the prices aren't completely outrageous.

 

[13thmonkey]

I'm running vista home premium 64bit on a 30GB ssd, vista is taking 20+ GB all other software is on another drive, including temp files, install files etc. out the SSD it fills up very quickly and i've had it up to 27GB on occassions, I've had to move all profile folders to another drive. Its not a great install because of all this. I'd recommned a slightly bigger SSD to be honest.

 

[UNICOMPLEX]

A few things to think about are the comparison of SSDs for instance do you want a MLC SSD or a SLC SSD, the differences are as follows MLC drives tend to have a larger amount of storge as in more GB but at a cost of read & write performance,
dont get me wrong there still fast.
But SLC SDD have better speed but lower capacities and tend to cost more.

Also try to keep away from the older versions of SSD or any with the Jmicron or JMF602 drive controllers as they like to be called, as these have had a some what troubled history or in other words there rubbish.

*Also remember do not defrag a SSD as this will wear out the flash memory cells.*

And as User 13thmonkey says it would be better to get a larger SSD.