Am I crazy for considering a SSD RAID 0 storage drive?

[gipper53]

I do mostly photo editing (large RAW files) on my desktop. Currently I have 3 drives in the box: 500GB 960 EVO for C: drive, 500GB Crucial MX500 for my 'editing drive', and a 5TB spinner for main data storage. I have solid backup routines on two external HDDs

I'd like to bump up the "editing drive" to 1TB. I don't need the extra storage, but I can buy a second 500GB MX500 for like $90 at Microcenter and RAID 0 them. I like this option for several reasons:

• Cheaper: 1/2 price of a 1TB drive
• Possible performance gains for opening multiple GB worth of RAW files
• The enthusiast's 'cool factor' of having RAID 0 SSDs. Lame...but the tech geek in me finds this appealing, just because I can!

As I regularly back the editing drive up to my 5TB spinnter, then back the spinner up to multiple external HDDs, my chance of data loss is pretty slim should the RAID fail. Would be more hassle rebuilding the drive than worrying about actually losing data. But SSD failure rates are low, so not sure there is much real world risk?

What'ya think? Just do it, or is this a crazy idea that I'll regret?

 

[nosirrahx]

Sequential speed on data that is replicated somewhere else is about all RAID 0 is good for.

You have a decent option here and there is a decent way to back out of this if the speed isn't what you want.

Bench the 2 drives in RAID 0 (on a workload you actually do) and if the speed is worse then just use the 2 drives independently.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

What'ya think? Just do it, or is this a crazy idea that I'll regret?

Nothing wrong with RAID0, when you're aware of the consequences. For a scratch drive, it's an acceptable solution. You get a nice bump in performance too.

You just need to avoid it where reliability is paramount.

One thing to consider, if you haven't already, is that when SSDs fail, they fail hard. And usually do it without warning. That said, over the last 10 years, I've lost 3 SSDs. HDDs are more like 20.

 

[Hans Gruber]

I did a RAID 0 with 2 SSD drives. I will post my benchmarks at a later date and time. But the results were 1030MB write speeds and around 900-925MB read speeds.

 

[gipper53]

Thanks, everyone. I'll probably just buy the extra drive and do the RAID. Will be something fun to play with.

 

[Hans Gruber]

As promised my RAID 0 benchmarks on SATA 6 ports.