2x X-25M G2 vs. 4x Vertex

[Elfear]

So if you guys had to choose between a pair of 80GB X-25M G2s and four 30GB Vertex drives, which would you pick? I will be using them in Raid 0 for an OS and game storage drive. The pair of Intel drives would cost around $60 more then the Vertex drives. Also, I'll be using an onboard ICH10R controller.

 

[Spikesoldier]

two intels

you get diminishing returns on the intel ICH raid controller after the second drive.

 

[TemjinGold]

You do realize the pair of Intels cost more than 4 Vertex drives because it's the space equivalent of 5.33 Vertexes right?

 

[alcoholbob]

Aren't the Agility drives cheaper for the same performance?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Why a RAID array? An Intel or Indilinx SSD is already fast enough for desktop use, throwing multiple drives together into a RAID isn't going to make any significant difference.

Plus now you're adding in the greater chance of data corruption and longer boot times waiting for the RAID BIOS to load

If you need more than 80gb of space get a 120gb or 240gb Vertex/Agility or a 160gb Intel drive.

 

[imported_Hok]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
Why a RAID array? An Intel or Indilinx SSD is already fast enough for desktop use, throwing multiple drives together into a RAID isn't going to make any significant difference.

Can you clarify and speak to actual numbers (estimates). A SSD is around 200 MB/s read transfer lets say and in a RAID setup conservative is 350, etc.....

 

[Ben90]

I agree with EarthwormJim, raid isnt the OMFG 1 MILLISECOND WINDOWS BOOT TIME!!!!!117!!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP 52985 FPS CRYSIS that everyone thinks it is

I vote getting a 160gb intel, the performance difference between that and striped 80gbs is negligible in everything except sustained transfer speeds, the difference is in 5 years you still have 1 semi slow/small drive vs 2 horridly slow/small drives

 

[Elfear]

You guys make good points. The reason why Raid 0 appealed to me is the sustained throughput. For most things you'd do everyday, you probably wouldn't see much difference, but installing apps or data transfer I think you'd see some good gains. As far as greater risk of data corruption, I was under the impression that SSDs were much less prone to fail like an HDD would.

I already have the Vertex drives but I've been reading a lot of good things about the G2s. I don't fully understand how the performance of the drives would affect real-world activities. For example, the Intel drives have much better random reads and writes but how does that translate into everyday usage?

 

[Forumpanda]

What media do you install applications from where you can saturate even 1 SSD?
Obviously installing from an image file or transferring large files from to mind, but some quick math says that 4.5GB file copy at 70MB/sec is about 60 seconds, I doubt you will need to or can speed up that operation much but using raid.

I would say for any conceivable usage scenario I can think of there is no point in using raid on good quality SSDs.

Originally posted by: Elfear
I already have the Vertex drives but I've been reading a lot of good things about the G2s. I don't fully understand how the performance of the drives would affect real-world activities. For example, the Intel drives have much better random reads and writes but how does that translate into everyday usage?

For actual daily useage random read/write is *much* more important than throughput speed, and by much more I mean much more, I would bet that almost any operation you do on an SSD is bottlenecked by random IO, application installs particularly (apart from moving very large files which is already fast anyway).