SSD's, RAID, and boot drives.

[artibaton]

I have done extensive searching but am unable to find exactly what I am looking for.

What I would like to do is use an SSD in RAID1+0, but a few issues come up. AFIAK, TRIM is not supported in RAID1 (seems like it is supported in RAID 0). Because TRIM is not supported, the life expectancy is around 1-2 years? This is too short for me, I was hoping for 4-5 years. So, any experience of the life of SSD in RAID1 without TRIM? Due to the way it works, it seems like all drives will die approx. at the same time. I am not looking to set up an SSD RAID5 for wear purposes.

So, my options turned into SSD as boot, with HDD in RAID1 (maybe even RAID0+1) To increase performance of the SSD and decrease storage usage, is it a good idea for me to move the user profiles and appdata onto the HDD? I have read that this can cause registry issues as well as actually decrease the performance of the system, because those things are accessed frequently and the SSD is obviously faster than the HDD in RAID.

Is there a way to make the HDD a default installation path? Or do I have to do this manually each time? I have thought about making a shortcut to D:/ on my desktop and just choose that, but I am looking for an automatic solution.

Another issue that came up is how does the backup of the SSD + RAID work? Would I need an extra storage unit? Can I use the RAID as backup as well as redundancy? (If so, how do I do either of these things? - Links please)

 

[JohnnyLucky]

What do you do with your computer that requires a RAID array?

Modern 3rd generation solid state drives are very fast. Unless you simply want bragging rights RAID arrays really aren't necessary. As you already found out there are some issues with RAID arrays.

 

[artibaton]

The desire for SSD in RAID is more of less for... curiosity. As for the HDDs in RAID, I have a lot of valuable information and downtime can severely hurt me. I will still be backing up the data, but downtime is of main importance.

I do some (minimal) video editing, encoding, photoshop, 3d graphics, which is why I want the HDD's in RAID1 - maybe even RAID0+1 for sake of speed AND redundancy.

The speed increase is very appealing to me, but SSD's are not cost effective enough for me to use that as storage.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

For video editing, encoding, photoshop, and 3D graphics have you considered one ssd for the operating system and applications and a second ssd to be used as a scratch. disk?