SSD vs RAID 0

[jnc]

Hello

This might be worth looking at by the toms hardware folks (unless its been done before or someone knows offhand) but I was curious if it were better to do a single SSD vs 2 Western Digital RE4 WD1503FYYS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 64MB (raid 0)

Just a curiosity factor

 

[Hawkeye22]

A SSD will be much faster than a mechanical drive, including a small RAID 0. Mechanical drives have a higher latency because they have to wait for the data to spin beneath the read heads. There are no moving parts in a SSD.

 

[Onus]

I'd like to see more data on this myself. It seems to me that access times will be much faster on the SSD (in part due to latency, as described above), but throughput could go either way, with Writes in particular likely to favor the RAID. Does anyone have links to some benchmarks? I'm at work right now and there are limits to what I can search and/or access.

 

[Hawkeye22]

This is from 2008, but should be valid since it's from Tom's.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-memoright,1926-10.html

 

[Onus]

Thanks, and that is interesting, but I was hoping for a comparison between a single SSD and a RAID-0 of two magnetic drives.

 

[jnc]

Thanks, and that is interesting, but I was hoping for a comparison between a single SSD and a RAID-0 of two magnetic drives.

This is what i was looking for as well

 

[Hawkeye22]

Doh, sorry, I should have read a little further. I didn't notice the SSD's were set up as an array in that article.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Here is an older comparison from 3/2010. I'm sure there are faster drives than these from WD, but it's still noteworthy.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=248560

 

[jnc]

Here is an older comparison from 3/2010. I'm sure there are faster drives than these from WD, but it's still noteworthy.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=248560

This is perfect!! I guess that solves that, I will be looking at getting an SSD for my primary windows drive, thanks!



On a side note, does anyone have any benchmarks they can link to doing raid 0 with two vertex 3's? This is possible with ich10r mobo's right?

 

[Hawkeye22]

You will lose TRIM support if you raid the SSD's.

 

[Onus]

Outstanding information. That makes the choice very clear. I may RAID-1 my data for safety, but the boot drive will remain a SSD. Thanks.

 

[nitrium]

You will lose TRIM support if you raid the SSD's.

TRIM isn't important for Sandforce based drives. They have built in garbage collection which effectively achieves the same thing. i.e. You can safely RAID 0 Sandforce drives and not lose any performance over time.

 

[WyomingKnott]

One additional point, OP. RAID 0 setups are a lot more likely to fail than single-drive setups, and especially more likely to fail in a way that will leave your data unrecoverable. Clonezilla doesn't work with failed RAID 0 sets.

So if you do RAID 0, backup early and backup often. And no, RAID 1 is not a substitute for backups.

 

[johnyquest]

Old thread, I know, but I hear it all the time -- Raid1 is not a substitute for backups. But what about a RAID1 NAS, completely separete of the computers?

I feel as though that's sufficed for a long time. I mean, it doesn't protect against accidental deletes, but hey, you can't fix stupid. And considering you should only be backing up there...


M

 

[fairbanks002]

I think the main reason people say RAID 1 is not a replacement for backup is because of natural disaster. They really mean "offsite backup" when they say this.

It's good advice because if your house catches on fire, even if you have 10 copies of the data, they are useless if they all get destroyed in the same fire.