sshd raid 0 vs ssd + hdd with intel srt

[darth-stu]

hi guys.. (sorry for the acronyms in the titles but it the only way to ask the question in less than a million words haha)

OK so I'm building a new storage setup for my gaming rig and iv done my research and whittled my many choice's down to 2 options and would like to tap your knowledge on which is best.

option 1
x1 Samsung 840 Series Pro 256GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive
x1 Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB
(actual drives may change depending on price's and availability)
approx. £220.00 for 2.2tb

use 64gb of the ssd to cache the hdd with intel's smart response tech as drive D: for stem to be installed on and use the remainder as drive c: for windows to run on pure ssd.

option 2
x2 Seagate SSHD 7200RPM 3.5" 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 8gb mlc nand
approx £180.00 for 4tb

and then just raid and partition.

I'm leaning toward option 1 as on paper its the better performer having all the windows files on the ssd and then my games will get cached with the 64gb srt.
but is that just a waste of my time and money when option 2 is cheaper and so so simple.

system info
asus maximus iv extreme z z68 mobo
intel 2600k cpu
windows 7 64bit os

 

[hang-the-9]

If you are using RAID0, make sure you have a backup drive as well. Not that you don't want one anyway, but with RAID0 you are taking the chances of losing files if either of the two drives fail, basically doubling your chance of data loss.

For just speed, the full SSD setup is faster. But you'll need a third drive for backups either case.

 

[darth-stu]

hi

thanks for the reply
I'm familiar with the perils of raid and to be honest its not a concerned (my currant array is 8 years old and still running fine lol) in any case the array would be for steam games only with steam cloud backup feature so wouldn't have any irreplaceable files on it.

 

[Y0GI]

I don't know this for sure, but I'm under the impression that ISRT cannot simply use a portion of a 256 GB SSD for the SRT cache - it needs to be a discreet SSD of 64 GB capacity, or less.

I could be all wet though.

Yogi