Best use for SSD and HDD drives on a new build

[PrimeAlpha]

I am building a new computer for gaming and it has been 7 years since I last built one. So with SSD out and affordable now I have purchased some drives. 2 Samsung 840 series SSD and 2 Seagate 3.5 2TB Barracuda's My Mobo is the Asus P9X79 with Corsair Vengeance DDR3 32GB (4x8) Ram, a CoolerMaster HyperEVO 212, a750watt PSU with an i7 3820 chip and 2 GTX 670 ti (SLI).

My Question is 2 fold

1. Should I set the SSD's to a Raid 0 and load the operating system (a guy told me that this would help load times of the OS but I don't really know and have seen many posts about the problems that windows has loading onto a Raid (Do we still really need to get a floppy drive?)

2. Is there a better use of these drives?

Thanks!

 

[pete123edgar]

1. Don't use ssd raid 0 for os, the os loading time may be faster but the pre os would be longer because they need to initialize raid 0. Raid 0 is not recommended due to 1. If you loose 1 drive you loose everything. 2. Only recommend for usually really huge files.

2. I would have a single ssd for OS. Another ssd for your favourite programs, for me its usually my work, such as adobe which takes forever on a hdd. And finally the hdd for your normal stuff, movies,games, some nonsense.

 

[pete123edgar]

Hey, I just read your post again. If you are gaming, 32gb will not help your gaming experience, 8gb is enough but if you like 16gb is more than enough unless you are looking for ramdisk (useless really.) Save some money and get the i5-3570k or i7-3770k and a z77 motherboard.

 

[Eecom Bespokeseo]

Always use RAID if you are serious about up-time even with SSD/SSHD. Never assume they are more reliable. Always use RAID1 mirror, especially if you rely on your computer for income and/or relaxation. http://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/44937-new-reliability-poll-shows-surprising-ssd-failure-rate/

 

[JohnnyLucky]

PrimeAlpha - What capacity are the two Samsung 840 solid state drives you purchased?

pete123edgar - I agree that 32GB of memory is unnecessary for typical home use or gaming. On the other hand a ramdisk is not totally useless. It is very handy for professional work with photos, videos, film, music, and 3D. For example, a ramdisk used as a scratch disk for Adobe products works wonders.

Eecom Bespokeseo - Thanks for posting the link to the Hexus article. Nice to know Intel claims an ssd failure rate of less than 1%. Normally ssd longevity is estimate in years; however, Plextor has been advertising a MTBF of 2.5 million hours. That may not be far off the mark. I'm looking forward to reading the results of the more detailed in-depth survey because there are a lot of unanswered questions in the first survey with the very small sampling.

RAID Arrays - With the advent of modern 3rd generation SATA 3 6Gb/s solid state drives, a RAID array really isn't necessary unless a user is doing something very special or just wants bragging rights.

 

[PrimeAlpha]

They are 250GB each.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

One 250GB solid state drive is more than sufficient for your operating system, software applications, utilities, and favorite games.

 

[jemm]

I´d go Raid 0, so that would be the best to do with the 2 SSDs, in my opinion, of course.

No floppy drive anymore.