RAID 0 on SSD

[5150]

I'd do a comprehensive test of both before putting anything you value on them. If they dropped out of RAID they probably did so for a reason.

That's the problem with SSD's. There's no utility from the manufacturer to say if the drive is good or not.

[mduncan62]

If great benchmarks are the goal, go raid0

The thing is, we're talking about SSDs here, with a near-zero access time. There might be a lot more to RAID-0 this time other than benchmark numbers.

Sure, but what real world application is benefiting from this? The discussion appears to be centered around running the OS on a raid 0, so even with near-zero access time, what is the benefit?

I may be having a hard time separating my Job, from my home PC. I run a single SSD on my gaming rig. I only have Win7 64 on that drive, as does the author of the thread. So what real world gains will he see running windows 7 on r0 vs his current non-raid ssd.

[Sunburn74]

I'd imagine you'd see the greatest change in anything that is straight sequential reading (ie game level loads, windows boot, etc). I've always had my SSDs in raid-0 so I can't confirm if there is a difference, but gee one would imagine have read speeds of 1gb/s rather than 500 mb/s would be picked up in such circumstances.

[mduncan62]

I'd imagine you'd see the greatest change in anything that is straight sequential reading (ie game level loads, windows boot, etc). I've always had my SSDs in raid-0 so I can't confirm if there is a difference, but gee one would imagine have read speeds of 1gb/s rather than 500 mb/s would be picked up in such circumstances.

Windows boot times, game level loads... So a gain on things that aren't all that important in the long run. I'd imagine that read speeds like that might be great for something that actually uses them. There's nothing compelling about fast boot times, at least IMO.

[morphine]

Sure, but what real world application is benefiting from this? The discussion appears to be centered around running the OS on a raid 0, so even with near-zero access time, what is the benefit?

That's the whole thing, right now we're not sure.

RAID-0 with mechanical drives was very much useless (except in very specific scenarios) because the main limiting factor for speed was their access time, which didn't change, now matter how many drives your used. With SSDs, that bottleneck is removed, so we may see good improvements with RAID-0. The thing is, I haven't yet come across any comprehensive reviews to swing this one way or the other. However, I'm open to the possibility.

[Waco]

That's the problem with SSD's. There's no utility from the manufacturer to say if the drive is good or not.

You can check the SMART data pretty easily to see if anything is crazily amiss.

Sure, but what real world application is benefiting from this? The discussion appears to be centered around running the OS on a raid 0, so even with near-zero access time, what is the benefit?

Double the space, double the transfer rates, etc. I can't say I saw a huge improvement going from a single drive to two of them in RAID 0 but I definitely saw application install times, level load times, and game load times decrease a noticeable amount. My setup was never intended to improve speeds though - I just didn't want to hassle with moving my Steam folder and game install folders around any more.

[Chrispy_]

For whatever reasons (lack of trim, controller overhead etc) My SSD Raid0 experience has been something like this when doubling the drives (either 1 to 2, or 2 to 4). I have used 4 indinilinx drives and 4 sandforce drives, all using intel ICH8/9/10 SATAII controllers (none of the SSD's were fast enough to need a 6GBPS port). Bear in mind that these are approximate figures based on memory of running things like CrystalDiskMark over the last three years.

Sequential Read/Write = 1.8x/1.8x
512K Read/Write = 1.3x/1.6x
4K QD1 Read/Write = 1.1/1.3x
4K QD32 Read/Write = 1.1/1.3x

Basically, RAID0 nearly doubles your sequential performance. As the file size of each IO goes down, so does the scaling efficiency. Oddly, writes scale better than reads as you add drives to the array.

I have noticed no real change in boot speed or application launch times, but as a gamer, level loads have sped up significantly - I guess they involve streaming a large amount of sequential data into RAM/VRAM.

[Jon1984]

As a gamer and needing more hard drive space for games (35 GB is short ) I'm certain it will be a good addition to my gaming machine Hopefully it will work flawlessly

[vandy]

Just chiming in on my experience with SSD in raid 0. I have to agree with most of the people here have mentioned that SSD in RAID 0 does give an improvement overall BUT in very specific applications. I do a lot of composting/animation work in After Effects where I deal with thousands of 2k/4k, TGA/TIF/PNG files x 50+ layers per shot; having that work space on a SSD RAID 0 array is a joy. However, when doing other day to day tasks, playing games etc, I saw very little benefit. There was an improvement but very little. Since then, I've changed my setup to a big SSD as my boot/application drive and the SSD RAID 0 as my composting work-space.

If you are just using your box for day to day work , games, normal use; I highly recommend investing in a larger SSD that can do 6gb instead (sell your old one?) something like a 256gb Crucial M4 and have a simpler setup. In the end, you might save some cash and have a faster setup overall.

[Jon1984]

Well, I've got a little problem I guess but I'm not certain

It's like this, the Corsair Force as migrated to the 25nm technology in its new Force F60 drive, so the specs are similar to my Force 60Gb (35nm) although I'm not sure if there will be any problems by raiding them. Can somebody explain me what kind of trouble could this bring?

Thanks for the help

[Waco]

Assuming they are at least running similar firmware revisions you should be fine. If anything you'll see a slight decrease in speedup going from 1 drive to 2 since the second is likely to be a bit slower.

[Jon1984]

Assuming they are at least running similar firmware revisions you should be fine. If anything you'll see a slight decrease in speedup going from 1 drive to 2 since the second is likely to be a bit slower.

Yes, I thought that could be a issue, although if that would be the only problem it should be fine if I can't find the 32nm version... I'll post my thoughts as its complete