SSD in RAID

[Nickolie]

Hey,

Quick question really.

I'm building a new system and i'm currently looking at getting two SSDs to put into RAID.

The SSD's that i'm looking at are the Adata XPG SX900 which support TRIM (as I have been told that this is vital for a RAID setup)

I'm not too up to scratch with RAID setups and their advantages.

The system will be for gaming and AE work.

I was going to install the OS, games and applications to the SSD's then have some HDD's for files.

Could anyone shine any light on this setup and if it would be worth it?

Thanks

Nick

 

[alvine]

if you want to raid ssd's you can pick up smaller ones meaning if you go raid 0 with two 150gb ssd's you will create a single 300gb raid volume

 

[Hard Line]

I would like to add that you want the drives to have garbage collection for raid. not trim. trim does not work when the drives are in raid ( intel is supposedly working on this ) but it's been a couple years and no info yet . Intel has got trim pass through when the controller is set to raid and the ssd is on that controller but not a member of the raid array.

 

[ronintexas]

The two biggest advantages to a RAID setup are:
1) Striping the drives (make 2 volumes 1 volume)
2) Mirroring (if one drive fails, the 2nd keeps you going, you can swap out the bad, and the system rebuilds).

At work, RAID is a necessity - being down for any amount of time costs the company money - every minute is critical.

At home, I do not use RAID. Keeping it simple puts lower requirements on hardware, less issues, etc...I backup every SSD and Hard Drive daily, and if I lose a drive anywhere, I replace it and restore. The total down time is longer at home, but the additional expenditure isn't required to save time.

With the ease of Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8, and the "Library" system, you can easily move data from one drive to another by right clicking on the folder, go to properties, location, and simply change the path (it will move the data automatically). You don't have to remember C:, D:, E:, etc....just "Documents".

Programs install as easy, you don't need to remember what drive letter they are, when updating, the program knows where it is installed.

RAID striping, while it will give you one volume, slows down the system (not a huge decrease - somewhere between 1 and 5%), but it does take overhead, and just my opinion, the possible issues, overhead and hardware costs don't justify the rebuild times.

 

[Nickolie]

The two biggest advantages to a RAID setup are:
1) Striping the drives (make 2 volumes 1 volume)
2) Mirroring (if one drive fails, the 2nd keeps you going, you can swap out the bad, and the system rebuilds).

At work, RAID is a necessity - being down for any amount of time costs the company money - every minute is critical.

At home, I do not use RAID. Keeping it simple puts lower requirements on hardware, less issues, etc...I backup every SSD and Hard Drive daily, and if I lose a drive anywhere, I replace it and restore. The total down time is longer at home, but the additional expenditure isn't required to save time.

With the ease of Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8, and the "Library" system, you can easily move data from one drive to another by right clicking on the folder, go to properties, location, and simply change the path (it will move the data automatically). You don't have to remember C:, D:, E:, etc....just "Documents".

Programs install as easy, you don't need to remember what drive letter they are, when updating, the program knows where it is installed.

RAID striping, while it will give you one volume, slows down the system (not a huge decrease - somewhere between 1 and 5%), but it does take overhead, and just my opinion, the possible issues, overhead and hardware costs don't justify the rebuild times.

That's brilliant advice, thank you.

I'm just clocking up my options really but if RAID isn't going to give me much or a performance increase then there is just no need.

I might just purchase a single 128Gb/256Gb SSD then and another HDD. I don't need a tonne of storage 500Gb-1TB will be sufficient enough for me, as completed projects are transferred to an external HDD anyway. The case that I am getting does have a 'hot swap' feature so I may just get a 1Tb drive to use solely for an extra backup as well as the external drive.

Does anyone have any opinions on the Adata SSD's or can you recommend another drive that you feel is more suited to gamingand general reliability.

Many thanks,

Nick