4x Vertex 4 in Raid 0 or standalone?

[lourendo]

Should i configure my 4 Vertex 4's in a raid setup and put OS + Programs + Scratch + Capture Scratch on the one 512GB raid setup or should i leave each one dedicated to each function? I do video editing, 3d design, photoshop, after effects, etc.

thanks so much

Best answer will be awarded today.

 

[wasupmike]

configuring the 4 x SSD's in a RAID 0 sounds like a grand idea for your uses... great speed-up and use of tech - just make sure you backup (daily) any critical data off of it - as only 1 hardware failure on the RAID 0 and you lose all the data on it...

 

[Pinhedd]

It is not recommended to put SSDs in RAID-0. Very few if any controllers support propagating certain SSD specific commands through RAID. Last I checked TRIM is not supported in RAID mode (although Intel is planning to add it)

 

[Onus]

I personally would not trust OCZ drives in a RAID-0, except perhaps as a scratch disk where it doesn't matter if one fails.

 

[lourendo]

will TRIM be supported on a Marvell 9230 controller?

 

[JustAnotherNoob]

You loose TRIM support if you put SSDs in a RAID (though garbage collection still works).
Putting more than 2 disks in a RAID 0 is a bad idea, because with each disk the risk of loosing ALL your data rises. You only need to loose a single disk in a RAID 0 array to loose all your data.
If you have the time do a speed test of a single SSD vs a RAID 0 array of 2 disks vs a RAID 0 array of 4 disks. I would be surprised if you got a meaningful increase between 2 and 4 disks. And i would NOT be surprised to learn that a single SSD can come pretty close to a RAID 0 for sequential transfers.

Personally i would think that two RAID 0 arrays are probably the best compromise between performance and risk. Put OS+programs+swapfile on one array, and your data on the other. Backup your data often and regularly, and pull a disk image of your OS-array as soon as everything is set up the way you like it. That way you can restore your OS from the image if a disk in your first array fails, and you (hopefully) have a recent backup if a disk in your second array fails.

 

[Murissokah]

RAID 0 is not advised on SSDs, because the benefits it provides have little impact on real-world performance. You would have great sequential R/W rates, but that would mean, at best, a few seconds on a DVD-size transfer. On more common situations, like random 4k R/W, the difference would be negligible. In fact, the only real advantage I see is avoiding the trouble of organizing your data across 4 drives.

The kicker is that, for that little advantage, you lose TRIM and data reliability.

It's up to your preference really, does the neatier setup outweight the potential issues you may have? If you are all about performance, RAID 0 SSDs will top benchmarks, but won't be any faster when you actually need it.

You seem to already have the 4 disks, but if you don't, a single fast SSD would be a faster and cleaner solution.

 

[Murissokah]

You loose TRIM support if you put SSDs in a RAID (though garbage collection still works).
Putting more than 2 disks in a RAID 0 is a bad idea, because with each disk the risk of loosing ALL your data rises. You only need to loose a single disk in a RAID 0 array to loose all your data.
If you have the time do a speed test of a single SSD vs a RAID 0 array of 2 disks vs a RAID 0 array of 4 disks. I would be surprised if you got a meaningful increase between 2 and 4 disks. And i would NOT be surprised to learn that a single SSD can come pretty close to a RAID 0 for sequential transfers.

Personally i would think that two RAID 0 arrays are probably the best compromise between performance and risk. Put OS+programs+swapfile on one array, and your data on the other. Backup your data often and regularly, and pull a disk image of your OS-array as soon as everything is set up the way you like it. That way you can restore your OS from the image if a disk in your first array fails, and you (hopefully) have a recent backup if a disk in your second array fails.

Good thinking. Maybe a 3x Raid0 + 1 single system drive would be better. No reason to lose TRIM on the system drive, since 128GB is more than enough for that. Data backup should be done on a HDD, which is much cheaper and can be trusted for at least 5 years.

 

[lourendo]

RAID 0 is not advised on SSDs, because the benefits it provides have little impact on real-world performance. You would have great sequential R/W rates, but that would mean, at best, a few seconds on a DVD-size transfer. On more common situations, like random 4k R/W, the difference would be negligible. In fact, the only real advantage I see is avoiding the trouble of organizing your data across 4 drives.

The kicker is that, for that little advantage, you lose TRIM and data reliability.

It's up to your preference really, does the neatier setup outweight the potential issues you may have? If you are all about performance, RAID 0 SSDs will top benchmarks, but won't be any faster when you actually need it.

You seem to already have the 4 disks, but if you don't, a single fast SSD would be a faster and cleaner solution.

I do not have the drives yet but i will be buying soon. I am used to traditional drives where it is fairly important to have individual drives when video editing etc.
is there a benefit to having separate physical drives with ssd or has this principle been voided out by the new technology? thanks.

actually I find it much easier to organize when i have separate physical drives... less navigation, just open and there it is.

 

[Murissokah]

I do not have the drives yet but i will be buying soon. I am used to traditional drives where it is fairly important to have individual drives when video editing etc.
is there a benefit to having separate physical drives with ssd or has this principle been voided out by the new technology? thanks.

actually I find it much easier to organize when i have separate physical drives... less navigation, just open and there it is.

If you like the idea of organizing your stuff on different drives, it would be at least as fast. The benefit of having two separate drives would be when multitasking while transfering huge files, though I haven't been able to bottleneck my single drive yet (Vertex 3 256). I have a 2TB Raid0 array of HDDs for storage, and even copying a BD from one to the other (HDDs => SSD) is quite fast.

Considering your post, my advice would be a 128GB SSD + another one for storage, whatever size you feel like you need. A vertex 4 or a crucial M4 would be good choices (the 512GB m4 runs at 390USD).

 

[lourendo]

Best answer selected by lourendo.

 

[Ginola1]

I personally would not trust OCZ drives in a RAID-0, except perhaps as a scratch disk where it doesn't matter if one fails.

Why would you personally.. not trust OCZ drives?

Have been running 2x OCZ vertex 2's in raid 0 for more than 3 years with no problems AT ALL...

Raid them in my opinion the on-board trim/garbage collection on the drives will do a good enough job.

 

[Jens Melgaard]

You loose TRIM support if you put SSDs in a RAID (though garbage collection still works).
Putting more than 2 disks in a RAID 0 is a bad idea, because with each disk the risk of loosing ALL your data rises. You only need to loose a single disk in a RAID 0 array to loose all your data.
If you have the time do a speed test of a single SSD vs a RAID 0 array of 2 disks vs a RAID 0 array of 4 disks. I would be surprised if you got a meaningful increase between 2 and 4 disks. And i would NOT be surprised to learn that a single SSD can come pretty close to a RAID 0 for sequential transfers.

Personally i would think that two RAID 0 arrays are probably the best compromise between performance and risk. Put OS+programs+swapfile on one array, and your data on the other. Backup your data often and regularly, and pull a disk image of your OS-array as soon as everything is set up the way you like it. That way you can restore your OS from the image if a disk in your first array fails, and you (hopefully) have a recent backup if a disk in your second array fails.

Wait what... If anything, small Random reads are the area where we wouldn't expect a meaningful performance gain? ... For Sequential reads/writes I would expect close to a linear scaling to where it brakes the interface bottleneck, at which point no matter what you do, you won't pull more out of more drives... (this happens allot sooner rather than later for many secondary on-board controllers).

Have been running 3 x Vertex 3 240GB on a LSI 9265-8i for 2 years now, still rocks around 1.5GB/s in ATTO which is very close to linear scaling... Sequential transfer is rather useless in most cases though. (Tests put a single drive around 550MB/s, meaning liniar would be 1.65GB/s)

(Unless you where talking single SSD version regular disks in Raid0, in which case you need allot of disks or the expensive high performance disks to catch up to today's SSD's again, bottle necks aside)