To RAID or not?

[silverdog]

Hello all, could I ask your advice about my latest confusion. I currently have the following set up which I need to improve.

ASUS p8z68-v pro/gen3 mobo
intel i7 cpu
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA 2.5" 6Gb/s Solid State Drive - running the OS
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - for storage

my problem is the SSD i use for running everything is now so full of software it only has 6gb left and i need to add more programmes. The first solution was to get a new 240gb SSD to run the OS and use the current 120gb as another storage drive. Then I started reading about RAID setups so thought maybe i could buy another Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SSD and RAID it with the current one. So heres my questions

1. in a RAID0 setup up will that give me 240gb of space?
2. in RAID0 Will it make my system run faster?
3. do I need a RAID controller or is my MOBO capable without one? ( ie is it built in ? )
4. Will i have to reload every bit of software and start again or can i just plug in the new drive and 'graft' it onto the old one?
5. should I stick with my first plan and just buy a bigger SSD and start again?

Im really sorry if these are stupid questions but you've got to start somewhere and this place has always been the best place for me so far.

Thanks for any help you can offer

 

[tomatthe]

1. Yes
2. No, only benchmarks would show any improvement. You also lose trim function which is still fairly important for ssds. You would also double your risk of losing any data stored on your ssd set.

3. Your system has a built in one.
4. Reload
5. Yes. There to several disadvantages of trying to run ssd's in a raid set. I would highly suggest getting a larger drive and going that route. The 256g samsung 830 is about $160 right now which is a much better drive then the corsair, and at a very good price point.

 

[silverdog]

Thanks tomatthe for the quick and concise reply, just what I need. It makes things a lot easier for me that way too and less risky. plus i get an extra 120gb of storage which i could do with too. One more quick one , what is better about the samsung? when i compare a SSD's the performance between most of them is roughly the same.

 

[tomatthe]

Well personally I've had 3 of those force 3 drives die in less then a year, and 1 of their performance series that same year. I also had tons of issues with them, when they were going through releasing firmware updates every month trying to fix the blue screen issues. Reliability was what I was making that statement on.

 

[silverdog]

thanks again tomatthe. I took a look at the samsungs and they are shipped with norton ghost. as soon as i saw norton it worried me so im gonna check to make sure its just free software in the box and i dont have to install it.