How dependable are SSD in RAID 0 compare to HD?

[kouasupra]

It's been a while since I've upgraded my HD. I still have a 300gb WD Raptor in it. I need more room, but speed could also benefit too. Been thinking about getting another 300gb WD raptor and RAIDing it but I'm sure the HD are more prone to crashing vs. SSD.

I've been looking on newegg and noticed that 2 OCZ 256gb SSD is $320+tax vs. a 480gb which is around the same price or more.

My question is: How dependable are 2 SSD in RAID 0 compare to HD? Does the SSD crash less compare to HD?

Thanks!

 

[noidea_77]

The SSDs are more reliable compared to HDDs, but the raid0 is likely to crash and you will loose all your data. The performance improvement you see is the reduced seek time of a SSD. Compared to HDDs it's ten times faster. raid0 only improves the transfer speed and that only matters for very large files copied from one SSD to another.

 

[kouasupra]

I'm thinking about picking up a drobo for backing up my stuff. I tend to get lazy at times and forget to back up my stuff that's why I also want a bigger storage space. I do a lot of photo editing and the RAW files are just huge. I figure with 2 SSD in raid 0 the transfer and photo editing should be faster.

 

[Kursun]

My boot drive has always been RAID 0. For the past 2-3 years now I have SSD RAID 0. I had no problems regarding dependability. You have to do backups of course (I use Acronis TIH), whether you use SSDs or mechanical disks, or RAID 0.

But as you probably know os doesn't support TRIM function with SSD RAID 0s. If you do go the RAID 0 way be prepared to wipe your SSDs from time to time. It may not be worth the trouble considering the amazing speed of single SSDs today.

 

[mad-max79]

I don't think that a SSD Raid will improve your image transfer or the photo editing.
A single SSD is fast enough and all features like trim are supported. If you transfer images from your camera your CF/SD card will be the bottleneck.
I have a Samsung 830 and can recommend it.

 

[Kursun]

I do process photos with my PC too. I always shoot raw. My raw files are each ~12 mb. I use Phase One Capture One Pro 7 software to do batch processing, sometimes a hundred photos. And it takes a long time!.. Though my boot drive is RAID 0, my photo data is on a mechanical drive.

I do 35 mm analog film scanning with my Nikon CoolScan V ED too. My scanned TIFF files are 130 mb each! I have hundreds, thousands of these files.

Image transfer is no problem. It is what you do after image transfer. There is lots of disk i/o in the process.

Judging from the SDD capacity Kouasupra is lookin for I think this is not a boot only drive but will hold data as well.

So I think RAID 0 will help actually. But as I said before, SSDs today are very, very fast. The new Sandisk Extreme 240 gb in my new laptop is much faster than my quite old 2*64 gb Corsair (P64, discontinued model) RAID 0 SSDs in my desktop. I think a single modern SSD will probably satisfy you. RAID 0 will help but lack of TRIM support is a nuisance.

 

[kouasupra]

My boot drive has always been RAID 0. For the past 2-3 years now I have SSD RAID 0. I had no problems regarding dependability. You have to do backups of course (I use Acronis TIH), whether you use SSDs or mechanical disks, or RAID 0.

But as you probably know os doesn't support TRIM function with SSD RAID 0s. If you do go the RAID 0 way be prepared to wipe your SSDs from time to time. It may not be worth the trouble considering the amazing speed of single SSDs today.

I didn't know that. I would hate to wipe my SSDs from time to time. One thing about the RAID is definitely more storage. It seem like buying 2 smaller GB is cheaper then one large GB SSD.

I have a 5D MKIII and the RAW files are huge and sometimes there are over 100s of pictures from a photo session. It takes forever to upload. To be honest I'm not a big fan of RAID 0, but I don't mind the extra speed and storage.

 

[Dangi]

Mmm, one thing to consider is why not RAID 1 ???

You improve reliability of your system and also increase reading times (in theory 2x speed) while writing stays the same

 

[DarkSable]

Alright. Kursun, why not go ahead with getting two SSDs, but don't raid them. Use one as a boot drive, and one as a scratch disk - something to store projects on as they're being worked with.

Kouasupra, the reason why buying two smaller drives is because they have considerably less performance - up to half a terabyte or so, the performance of an SSD increases by a fair margin as the size increases.

 

[geofelt]

Current ssd's on a 6gb sata port transfer at the limits of sata, about 500mb/s. That is 2-3 times the best hard drives.

One advantage of a larger ssd is that it will have more nand chips that will allow more to transfer in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0.

What really slows a ssd down is writing when there are no free nand blocks.
Freeing up nand blocks without a read/rewrite cycle is what trim does. Raid-0 does not have the drivers to do that, excepting perhaps a Z77 chipset. The same issue arises when the drive approaches full. A single larger drive can manage space better.

If price is not too much of a bother, look at the new Samsung 840 PRO series. They are a notch above in performance.
Initial reviews with earlier firmware had some failures, but all retail units should have updated firmware that corrects that.

 

[kouasupra]

Current ssd's on a 6gb sata port transfer at the limits of sata, about 500mb/s. That is 2-3 times the best hard drives.

One advantage of a larger ssd is that it will have more nand chips that will allow more to transfer in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0.

What really slows a ssd down is writing when there are no free nand blocks.
Freeing up nand blocks without a read/rewrite cycle is what trim does. Raid-0 does not have the drivers to do that, excepting perhaps a Z77 chipset. The same issue arises when the drive approaches full. A single larger drive can manage space better.

If price is not too much of a bother, look at the new Samsung 840 PRO series. They are a notch above in performance.
Initial reviews with earlier firmware had some failures, but all retail units should have updated firmware that corrects that.

That definitely makes sense. I'll look into the 480GB and 512GB.

 

[kouasupra]

This one looks pretty good for the money.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147190

 

[Kursun]

Mmm, one thing to consider is why not RAID 1 ???

You improve reliability of your system and also increase reading times (in theory 2x speed) while writing stays the same

RAID 1 is a nuisance too.
At the slightest discrepancy of two mirrored disks software starts to "build" the disks. This takes hours, ages. RAID 1 is more useful for situations where the show must go on no matter what. Besides it isn't a substitute for backups.

Increase in read performance is questionable and probably depends more on the disk controller.