2x 64gb ssd`s or 1x 128gb ssd

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aranlong

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im upgrading my rig and need advice on wether to go for 2x 64gb ssd`s or 1x 128gb ssd
its roughly the same price.
please post any suggestions.
 
Raid 0 64GB SSDs will be faster than one 128GB. Go with the Samsung 830's.
 
Worth the grief to set up a RAID 0 array?:confused: They'd be faster in every way -- be it reads, or writes.
 
2 x SSDs in RAID 0 absolutely blaze for read speeds.

My two Adata S511 128G drives have been in use every day from their wipe in November when they last had a firmware update. HD Tune Gives them an average speed of 869.1 MB/sec after 2 months heavy use with only 50G free space. Most of the benchmark is a flat line on 1019.2 MB/sec, I'm guessing this is a limit on the controller or SATA 3.

Write speeds will be better than a single drive but presumably not quite as good seeing as TRIM won't work when drives are in a RAID configuration (the Intel controllers pass on TRIM for single drives now though).

The only issue is this setup will use an extra sata 3 port and these seem to be at a premium. Fortunately my mechanical drves were only sata 2 anyway.
 
Personally, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't want the reduced reliability and possible downtime of the raid 0. Although all my data is on my NAS and I have weekly images of my SSD I wouldn't want the hassle of getting it working again. If anything I would go raid-1.

You probably wouldn't even notice the speed difference anyways.
 
RAID 1 would give you similar speed with 2 disks but you would need 4 disks to get the same capacity. 4 disks of course would increase the speed even more but that would be double the price per GB. The other issue is I don't know of any motherboards boards that that have more than two sata 3 ports on the same RAID controller so you would need to drop to sata 2 or get a separate RAID controller.

So...

If you have a shortage of sata ports in something like a laptop or if you intend on the disk being portable I think single SSD would be best.

If these are not an issue I would suggest using two in RAID 0.

If the data is critical both these options are poor and you would be best to go with another solution such as s0rce suggested :)
 
You'd also lose TRIM in a raid setup if that matters to you at all.

In day to day typical use, you'd never really notice the difference. In copying massive files and benchmarks sure, but most of us don't just do that all day.

There are pro's and con's each way, it's up to you to decide what you're willing to live with.
 
I mean faster in what way that isn't a benchmark. Will a RAID0 boot Windows faster than a single drive? How much? How about application loading? How much? Noone ever seems to know.
 
I believe the peformance of a single 128GB SSD is better than the performance of a 64GB SSD. (Benchmaarks and all)

While RAID of 64GB drives will be somewhat better than a single 128GB, a RAID of 128GB drives will be faster.
 
dustNbone said:
I mean faster in what way that isn't a benchmark. Will a RAID0 boot Windows faster than a single drive? How much? How about application loading? How much? Noone ever seems to know.
Click to expand...

Difference in Windows boot will be a matter of seconds. And ask yourself - how often do you boot Windows? 99% of the time the OS will sleep instead, and it comes out of sleep in literally 2-3s on any ssd.
 
Melon said:
Noo, stay away -- Sandforce controllers ftl.
Click to expand...

While I don't see myself buying an SF SSD anytime soon, I've read quite a bit about this over the past week or so, and now think SF is the better option for R0. They have much better GC, which is important considering you won't have Trim. If I was setting up R0, I'd definitely go with SF and would probably pick one of the 3xnm sync nand models, such as the Patriot WIldfire or Vertex 3 Max Iops.

Edit: I lied! Just picked up a 60gb Pyro SE
 
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Melon said:
Worth the grief to set up a RAID 0 array?:confused: They'd be faster in every way -- be it reads, or writes.
Click to expand...

Faster in benchmarks that measure STR but not really faster in the real world. Remember that you buy an SSD for how fast it reads and writes 4K blocks not how fast it reads or writes a 1 GB file sequentially. Dividing 4K blocks up against 2 SSDs does not really help. If you did not buy SSDs for its 4K performance I have a linux software raid 6 hard drive array at work that reads at over 800 MB/s and writes at over 600 MB/s.
 
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i currently have a samsung 103sj 1tb and a 160 gb wd

i can either buy another samsung for raid 0 which is 75 quid (110 dollars)

or a 64-128gb ssd
 
im using sata 2 so the 250mb average reads on the intel are great but seems a bit disappointing with less than 100mb/s writes
 
Having tried SSDs in RAID 0 I can tell you it's not any noticeably faster than single SSDs outside benchmarks, and you double your risk of data loss, won't get TRIM, etc etc.
 
bump i need help again kingston v200 or vertex 3 or force 3 120gb or just get a 64gb m4
 
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