2x 64gb 830 in raid 0 or single solo 128gb 830

[xxcysxx]

hello folks,
i read through the several pages of the forums i don't see much discussions about raid around here, seems like it's a taboo to even talk about it. i'm an old school enthusiast and been a way from pc for a while, at least 5-6 years. so please fill me in on the new hype.

but anyway, i'm looking to built a new gaming pc, and i'm interested in snappy performance where ever possible. so how about the idea of two 64gb 830 in raid 0. would that yield fruit? or should i just stick to a single solo 128gb 830 drive.

i'm going to have maybe just one or two games to play with at a time and delete them when i get a newer game to play with. i have other computers for working purposes, so this machine is just strictly for games. i'm not concern of data losses in case one drive fails. but that can also easily be counter for.

thanks

 

[Rockdpm]

Raid only increases Speeds, i don't think it increases Hard Drive capacity. So just get a 128 gb if you need more storage

 

[traver]

Ofc 2x64GB in raid 0 = 128 GB Rockdpm, but nvm.

The disadvantages of putting small SSD's in raid, is as I see it the following.

1. Small SSD's are slower than larger SSD's. So unless you use more than 2 drives, I dont think you would win a lot performance wise.
2. You cannot turn on TRIM in raid mode AFAIK, see this link what that would mean: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-520-sandforce-review-benchmark,review-32373-12.html ("Fortunately, this may never be an issue for you. It only applies once you've written data to every block. And that's only likely to happen in an operating environment without TRIM support or if you RAID two SandForce-based SSDs together.").

I would go for one 128 GB drive.

 

[xxcysxx]

well, actually i was directly referring to raid 0, sorry about that, should have mention it earlier. this will stripe the drive and therefore the two 64gb drive will act as a single 128gb drive. the operating system will see it as a single 128gb drive. the striping should make it access data at double rate, since data is access from both drive at the same time. the larger the stripe the more data it will get through but at the expense of storage capacity, only a perk if there is a lot of smaller files. well, that was according to what i've experience in the past with mechanical hard drive. not sure if it would still hold true for ssd drive.
since i only deal with games and nothing else, and games have large data chunks when it comes to loading. and since i only have one or two games at a time to play and i also demand snappiness, storage capacity is not really concern.

 

[aicom]

I'd go for 128 GB also. You may give up some initial performance, but over the long term, not having TRIM is going to hurt your write performance on your RAID array.

 

[xxcysxx]

trim? they still depend on the operating system to function? i though trim has long been implemented into the ssd controller, on the actual ssd itself, and no longer need to have trim anymore. i though trim is a long gone thing of the past already, is it not?

i think they are now called something as garbage collector or something like that. and the drive should natively support it right on the controller, built right on the drive with the firmware to drive its functions. no need to worry about external trim support. please enlighten me on this, i'm confused now.

 

[CaedenV]

SSDs are funny things, and do not benefit from RAID like HDDs do. smaller SSDs do not run at full speed because they are not using all of the available data channels available to them. So generally speaking, doubling the size of your SSD is essentially the same as doing a RAID... except that there are less parts to fail, less drivers/controllers to deal with, and it is simpler to work on.

That being said, RAID will boost performance a little bit, especially on high que small file read/writes. But it is not going to be a massive improvement between a single large drive vs 2 small drives.
If it was a matter of a single drive vs a RAID of the same drives then you would get a much larger performance boost.

As for TRIM over RAID, it can be done over modern Intel RAID controllers like those found built into most intel based motherboards assuming you have the current drivers/UEFI installed, but I think it is limited to RAID1 and 5 (though I could be wrong on that). Most firmwares (other than sandforce) do not require TRIM to work properly over the long haul, so perhaps look at something with a marvel or indilinx controller that has it's own garbage collection if you are planning on using RAID.

RAID0 is not raid, it is just ganged discs (real RAID has redundancy) and is prone to failures, so do not use this unless you are using drives with 5+ year warranty such as the Intel SSDs. Otherwise stick with RAID1, 5, or 10

 

[aicom]

TRIM is not a thing of the past and neither is garbage collection. TRIM assists the garbage collector (GC) in determining what data can be thrown out when the GC runs. TRIM is an ATA command sent from the OS when a file is permanently deleted which informs the SSD's GC that the LBA blocks mapping that file are no longer valuable and can be overwritten by the controller without the need to preserve the data. Without TRIM, the SSD controller has no way to determine what data is actually valuable so it is forced to preserve it all when it runs the GC. This results in more SSD wear and a lower lifespan. Some SSD controllers deal without TRIM better than others. SandForce is one of the best of the pack when it comes to GC without TRIM. Not having TRIM won't cause any issues, but it may lower performance and longevity a bit.

 

[xxcysxx]

thank you for your explanation, the 128gb it is.
this thread is finished.
thank you all for the helpful response.

 

[xxcysxx]

Best answer selected by xxcysxx.

 

[CaedenV]

trim? they still depend on the operating system to function? i though trim has long been implemented into the ssd controller, on the actual ssd itself, and no longer need to have trim anymore. i though trim is a long gone thing of the past already, is it not?

i think they are now called something as garbage collector or something like that. and the drive should natively support it right on the controller, built right on the drive with the firmware to drive its functions. no need to worry about external trim support. please enlighten me on this, i'm confused now.

Trim is merely one form of garbage collection, and it has to be supported by the drive (all major drives support it) and is controlled by the OS. Some drives (like marvel based drives, Crucial M4 would be an example) have their own GC and do not require TRIM.