SSDx4 Raid 0 Multi Part Questions

[devren]

Question 1
I am considering buying 4 x Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F240GB3A-BK
I was thinking about putting all of them in raid 0. Is there any reason not to do this?


Question 2
I currently have Evga x58 ftw3
I anticipate seeing somewhere around 1000-1200mbs on this board.

Question 3
I'm not sure if I should get a new MB or use the existing one, or even buy a raid card for better performance

Question 4
Some people have said to not put my os on the raid partition, but recently I heard that I will only lose about 10% top at most. (no trim and all) So if im useing 4 drives in raid 0 im thinking this wont matter at all and I wont even notice the slowdown.

Final Question
I am a little confused on the controllers, with sata 2/3. My current understanding is that each port has a max speed of 300mbs/600mbs So if i have 4 drives in raid on sata 2 my max possible speed(minus overhead) 1200mbs and 3 would be 2400mbs. Is this correct?

Thanks

 

[chesteracorgi]

A RAID 0 configuration across 4 drives has a predicted failure rate of about 8-10 X of a non-raided drive. With the failure rates of SSDs you may be setting up for failure. If you do this then you had better have GOOD backup.

The main advantage ot SSDs is their speed over a HDD. 4 SSDs in RAID will saturate the SATA 3.0 bus and your bottleneck will be with the bus. You would be safer with 2 X 2 SATA RAID 0 drive arrays rather than a 1 X 4.

Most mobos with SATA 2.0 support only support 2 drives on a 3.0 SATA array. You may need to get a RAID controller card for the RAID support of 4 SATA 3.0 drives.
That, or get a new CPU & mobo.

My experience with SSDs is that they are prone to fail at about 5 X the rate of HDDs. Good luck if you do a 4 SSD RAID 0: you will need it.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

What do you do with your computer that requires four solid state drives in a RAID array? Do you do some sort of highly specialized professional work?

 

[Dereck47]

Question 1
I am considering buying 4 x Corsair Force Series 3 CSSD-F240GB3A-BK
I was thinking about putting all of them in raid 0. Is there any reason not to do this?

Why do you need 4 240GB drives in RAID-0? What are you going to be using your system for?

Question 2
I currently have Evga x58 ftw3
I anticipate seeing somewhere around 1000-1200mbs on this board.

If you’re lucky you may see such performance.
All X58 motherboards do not have native SATA 6Gb/s ports. They use 3rd party Marvell controller for their 6Gb/s ports. The Marvell 9128 controller on your board has a data bandwidth of PCIe x1 at 5Gb/s (500MB/s).

Question 3
I'm not sure if I should get a new MB or use the existing one, or even buy a raid card for better performance

If you are going to RAID-0 4 SATA 3 SSDs you should by a PCIe x8 RAID card regardless of whether or not you upgrade your motherboard.

Question 4
Some people have said to not put my os on the raid partition, but recently I heard that I will only lose about 10% top at most. (no trim and all) So if im useing 4 drives in raid 0 im thinking this wont matter at all and I wont even notice the slowdown.

True, with 4 240GB drives in RAID-0 the lack of TRIM is not an issue.
You just have to Log Off once a month or so to allow Garbage Collection to maintain drive performance.

Final Question
I am a little confused on the controllers, with sata 2/3. My current understanding is that each port has a max speed of 300mbs/600mbs So if i have 4 drives in raid on sata 2 my max possible speed(minus overhead) 1200mbs and 3 would be 2400mbs. Is this correct?

Correct, but those are theoretical maximum speeds. You probably won’t get close to those speeds with firmware (motherboard) RAID. You would need hardware (RAID card) RAID to get maximum performance of 4 drives in RAID-0.


Personally I wouldn’t RAID-0 4 240GB drives just to create 1 logical C: drive unless I had a compelling reason.
The odds of drive failure increase with the number of drives you have in an array.

I would RAID-0 2 small 64GB drives to use as my O/S.
I would then get 2 480GB drives, one for data/storage, and the other for a backup drive.

 

[foscooter]

You can't do it on your mobo.

You have 6 native SATA II ports, which you can RAID them all together.
And SATA II max bandwidth is 3.0Gbps, or roughly 300MBps.

The add-on SATA III ports can't/won't intergate/connect with the native ones!
And SATA III max bandwidth is 6.0Gbps, or roughly 600MBps.

So 2 SATA III SSD will do what 4xSATA II SSD do. But I wouldn't use the add-on RAID controller! Marvell and/or JMicron are cr@p.

And, OMG, WHY? You must have a bottomless bank account.

I just dropped my RAID set up, and it's still as fast. I went from 2xOCZ Vertex 3 60GB to 1xIntel 520 180GB SSD. Yes benchmarks are lower, but in real world use, I can't tell!

Go with one large SSD, and get a couple hard drives (1-2TB) for data storage and backups.

BTW: if you really want to RAID 0 4xSSD, get a RAID card, like the one reviewed here: HighPoint 2720SGL RocketRAID...

 

[devren]

A RAID 0 configuration across 4 drives has a predicted failure rate of about 8-10 X of a non-raided drive. With the failure rates of SSDs you may be setting up for failure. If you do this then you had better have GOOD backup.

I will have backup setup and running. Plus the only thing on the drive will be games and applications, no save data(except what I'm working on at that time)

The main advantage ot SSDs is their speed over a HDD. 4 SSDs in RAID will saturate the SATA 3.0 bus and your bottleneck will be with the bus. You would be safer with 2 X 2 SATA RAID 0 drive arrays rather than a 1 X 4.

I think I need to use a raid card then.

Most mobos with SATA 2.0 support only support 2 drives on a 3.0 SATA array. You may need to get a RAID controller card for the RAID support of 4 SATA 3.0 drives.
That, or get a new CPU & mobo.

Correct my mb supports only 2 on 3.0 thats why I was curious if I should buy a raid card or if anyone new a great mb with built in sata3 with atleast 4 ports. (I havn't found any yet, So I figured I could buy the hds now and upgrade the mb later.)

My experience with SSDs is that they are prone to fail at about 5 X the rate of HDDs. Good luck if you do a 4 SSD RAID 0: you will need it.

I have only used 2 ssd and neither have failed. I had no idea poeple were having such trouble with them. Though I have always had good luck with hardware, save mbs and the amd xp chip(other chips were fine) and the mobility graphics from ati(but that may have been asus's fault as they needed special drivers for it, that was a nightmare), the only time I had a drive start to fail it gave me more then enough warning with the click of death.

Thank you for the responce.

 

[devren]

What do you do with your computer that requires four solid state drives in a RAID array? Do you do some sort of highly specialized professional work?

I play way to many games, I'm a programmer, and I and I do a lot of editing includeing cs stuff and tons of videos ect....

 

[aicom]

You can certainly do that, but you'll need to be prepared to drop another $300-$400 on a good bootable SATAIII RAID card to make it all work.

 

[devren]

First off, thanks for responding in a way that answered my questions and did so in an easy to understand way!

Why do you need 4 240GB drives in RAID-0? What are you going to be using your system for?

I choose 4 240s as I wanted around 1 gb of hd space. And Since the price for the drives were about $200 each. They were also rated around 500mbs read/write so They should be crazy fast. I will primarily be using the system for Gameing and Work. I have just over 1gb of games installed on my current computer, so It would be nice to simply put them all on the same ssd array.

If you’re lucky you may see such performance.
All X58 motherboards do not have native SATA 6Gb/s ports. They use 3rd party Marvell controller for their 6Gb/s ports. The Marvell 9128 controller on your board has a data bandwidth of PCIe x1 at 5Gb/s (500MB/s).

Thats good to know thanks. I didn't know the marvel was using a pcie x1

If you are going to RAID-0 4 SATA 3 SSDs you should by a PCIe x8 RAID card regardless of whether or not you upgrade your motherboard.

Are there any you suggest or better yet have personal experiance with? (or ones I should avoid)

True, with 4 240GB drives in RAID-0 the lack of TRIM is not an issue.
You just have to Log Off once a month or so to allow Garbage Collection to maintain drive performance.

Thank you, I didn't know you had to log off for Garbage Collection.

Correct, but those are theoretical maximum speeds. You probably won’t get close to those speeds with firmware (motherboard) RAID. You would need hardware (RAID card) RAID to get maximum performance of 4 drives in RAID-0.

Awesome, I wasn't sure if I was going to be stuck at a total speed of 300 or 600mb even in raid, its nice to confirm its a per port limit. thanks.

Personally I wouldn’t RAID-0 4 240GB drives just to create 1 logical C: drive unless I had a compelling reason.
The odds of drive failure increase with the number of drives you have in an array.

I just want instant boot and very fast load, I'm tired of stairing at my screen waiting for programs to load.

I would RAID-0 2 small 64GB drives to use as my O/S.
I would then get 2 480GB drives, one for data/storage, and the other for a backup drive.

Unfortunately I need a lot of storage space. My current config has 2x 600mb raptors for drive c a 120gb ssd for drive e and an 4 drives in raid for another 4gb storage drive. And I have 2 external drives for backup.
I didnt give much consideration to the 480s as I end up paying $100-130 more per 480gb or $1.1 per gig vs $0.83 per gig

Thanks again for all the info.

 

[devren]

You can't do it on your mobo.

You have 6 native SATA II ports, which you can RAID them all together.
And SATA II max bandwidth is 3.0Gbps, or roughly 300MBps.

The add-on SATA III ports can't/won't intergate/connect with the native ones!
And SATA III max bandwidth is 6.0Gbps, or roughly 600MBps.

So 2 SATA III SSD will do what 4xSATA II SSD do. But I wouldn't use the add-on RAID controller! Marvell and/or JMicron are cr@p.

The number of drives was for the size of the array more so then the speed. I understand that I wasn't exactly clear on it, but I was going to either use a raid addon card, buy a new mb, or use 4 sata2 ports.

And, OMG, WHY? You must have a bottomless bank account.

Not at all, I am just on my computer virtually 10-16 hours aday during the week and I have been wanting to go ssd for years. So I decided to use my tax return to get ssds

I just dropped my RAID set up, and it's still as fast. I went from 2xOCZ Vertex 3 60GB to 1xIntel 520 180GB SSD. Yes benchmarks are lower, but in real world use, I can't tell!

Go with one large SSD, and get a couple hard drives (1-2TB) for data storage and backups.

I was avoiding buying one card as it costs more per gb and I would get better performance.

BTW: if you really want to RAID 0 4xSSD, get a RAID card, like the one reviewed here: HighPoint 2720SGL RocketRAID...

I'll check out the link thanks.

 

[devren]

You can certainly do that, but you'll need to be prepared to drop another $300-$400 on a good bootable SATAIII RAID card to make it all work.

Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[Dereck47]

Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks

I don’t have experience with RAID cards but definitely look for these features/keywords when making your choice:

ROC (RAID-on-chip)
On-board memory or cache memory
PCIe 2.0 x8

 

[devren]

I don’t have experience with RAID cards but definitely look for these features/keywords when making your choice:

ROC (RAID-on-chip)
On-board memory or cache memory
PCIe 2.0 x8

Great thanks, I'll do just that.

 

[devren]

Best answer selected by devren.