Benefit of large SSDs, for people that don't need lots of space?

[VirtualLarry]

I currently don't own any SSDs larger than 240/256GB. (I do own many smaller ones, and a couple of working 240GB ones, although one is going out with a system I'm putting together for someone.)

I see that there are 512GB SSDs dropping below $200 now.

Is there any reason I should buy one or two of them? It seems that SSDs are going to double in terms of capacity for price in the next year, at the very least.

So it would seem like it would be wise to wait.

In my desktop rigs, I generally have a storage HDD as well as the OS / boot SSD. In my laptops, just one SSD.

I don't store a lot of data locally, I have several NAS units. The most I generally use, besides the OS, is downloading some OS install ISO files, that a later burn to disc.

I know Intel / Micro's 3D NAND is coming out in a little while too, which should increase capacity at the same price levels quite a bit, and hopefully, Samsung's prices will go down.

I'm rocking mainly SATA2 SSDs, a mix of Vertex 2, Vertex Plus R2, and X25-M and Intel 710.

 

[R0H1T]

IMO two small(ish) SSD's are better than one, add them in RAID0 you get ~2x the perf with very little price premium, the only real reason to get a bigger drive is if you're too tight on budget &/or don't have enough space to put two of'em in your system. Now with Intel adding support for TRIM on RAID arrays the only reason, apart from the two mentioned above, to not get two SSD's is if you have a fairly old mobo lacking such features.

 

[smakme7757]

I have a 500GB SSD in my main desktop and the primary reason for that is I play a few games everynow and again and they sucks space. I also use Windows on the desktop which takes up quite a chunk of space with Office, PDF software, Visual Studio ect. I think a base install with all my preferred software takes up around 65GB.

For the sake of completeness
In addition i have two 1TB volumes (both consist up of 2x 1TB drives in RAID 1) where I store documents, pictures and purchased software and so on.

In my laptop I only have a 256GB SSD and it's more than enough space. I do run Debian on the laptop, so a base install is only 10GB or not even that. It's quite small.

So in my opinion, if you have a use case for a larger SSD go for it or a faster SSD, then you might aswell buy a 500GB.

 

[Berryracer]

IMO two small(ish) SSD's are better than one, add them in RAID0 you get ~2x the perf with very little price premium, the only real reason to get a bigger drive is if you're too tight on budget &/or don't have enough space to put two of'em in your system. Now with Intel adding support for TRIM on RAID arrays the only reason, apart from the two mentioned above, to not get two SSD's is if you have a fairly old mobo lacking such features.

you get double performance only in sequential writes (copying large amounts of DATA). the 4K speeds are the same, thus, for a user, he wouldn't be able to tell which OS ius on RAID 0 or which one is on a single SSD

I have a RAID 0 setup as you can see from my sig. Why do I do it? Just because I have an extra slot / SSD in my laptop not for any performance difference that I can notice other than in benchmarks and only in sequential writes/reads

If I had the money, I would always opt for a single larger SSD over two smaller ones in RAID 0. It's NOT double the performance like many think. Theoritcally yes it is, but practically. no

 

[R0H1T]

The seq reads/writes will almost double, the 4K perf is also a lot better though not necessarily 2x ~
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-4.html
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-5.html

 

[mikeymikec]

I learnt a lesson quite a few years ago when I first starting stocking hardware spares for a small business - I made the mistake of stocking HDDs (well, more than one anyway), simply because new ones were steadily dropping in price, while steadily increasing in capacity and performance. The same applies to SSDs now.

 

[Blain]

I see that there are 512GB SSDs dropping below $200 now.

Is there any reason I should buy one or two of them?

Not unless you're using that $$ to buy a dozen or so refurbed Seagates.

These things are dropping in price, gaining performance and capacity too fast to "stock up" now.
I wouldn't buy any SSDs over 256GB unless I needed the extra capacity (actually using 200GB or less), allowing for a healthy buffer.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wouldn't buy any SSDs over 256GB unless I needed the extra capacity (actually using 200GB or less), allowing for a healthy buffer.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Wise words as always, Blain.

Likewise, 256GB is basically the sweet spot for price, capacity, and performance, so I would hesitate to go smaller than that too.

 

[Blain]

120-128GB are also pretty good low cost options.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

I upgrade when my main rig needs a bigger one (probably once every 2 years). Rarely because I need more performance... I highly doubt I would be able to notice any. I just "trickle it down", eg the newest ssd replaces the second-newest, etc. The oldest one gets put on backup/standby duty.

I got a 480gb M500 two weeks ago for $140. I'm surprised but happy that prices have dropped this much.

 

[KentState]

The seq reads/writes will almost double, the 4K perf is also a lot better though not necessarily 2x ~
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-4.html
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-5.html

Latency also goes up as well as the risk of failure. For a main drive you are either looking at RAID 10 or a large single one. Stripping alone is just asking for trouble.

 

[R0H1T]

I'd imagine anyone having important data on their system drive (RAID0) will have some form of backup &/or power loss protection, like a UPS, at their disposal. As for latency I doubt there'd be a huge difference, most probably too little to notice, plus it depends on a lot of other factors including the type of software employed.

 

[Blain]

I'd imagine anyone having important data on their system drive (RAID0) will have some form of backup &/or power loss protection, like a UPS, at their disposal.

You're giving people too much credit.
Spend a few years around these forums.

 

[ronbo613]

The larger SSD's free up a lot of space in your wallet. Like most technology products, odds are pretty good they will be cheaper in the future.

 

[R0H1T]

You're giving people too much credit.
Spend a few years around these forums.

I don't do any backup myself

I will however get a UPS soon, my previous one went kaput recently. I don't wanna risk the newly installed SSD's to die a premature death due to power failure plus there's no warranty on them, since they're LITEON OEM drives bought off eBay.

 

[who?]

I learnt a lesson quite a few years ago when I first starting stocking hardware spares for a small business - I made the mistake of stocking HDDs (well, more than one anyway), simply because new ones were steadily dropping in price, while steadily increasing in capacity and performance. The same applies to SSDs now.

Do you test all those HDDs before the no hassle return period is up? lakedude bought HDDs on sale but didn't get around to using them for many weeks and some of them didn't work.

 

[KentState]

I'd imagine anyone having important data on their system drive (RAID0) will have some form of backup &/or power loss protection, like a UPS, at their disposal. As for latency I doubt there'd be a huge difference, most probably too little to notice, plus it depends on a lot of other factors including the type of software employed.

Latency will have a larger impact on a system drive than increase throughput. Doesn't matter if you can read/write @ 1200MB/s when dealing with small files. Besides installs, you are moving small blocks of data around which is where latency is felt. Might not be a huge difference, but neither is RAID on daily use.

On top of that you are promoting something that is has 50% the reliability of a single drive. It's not a matter of backups or power supplies either. Who wants to be done and potentially have a 3rd SSD on hand to act as a backup. Seems like such a poor suggestion for 99.999% of users that will never benefit from a barely noticeable improvement.

 

[R0H1T]

Latency will have a larger impact on a system drive than increase throughput. Doesn't matter if you can read/write @ 1200MB/s when dealing with small files. Besides installs, you are moving small blocks of data around which is where latency is felt. Might not be a huge difference, but neither is RAID on daily use.

On top of that you are promoting something that is has 50% the reliability of a single drive. It's not a matter of backups or power supplies either. Who wants to be done and potentially have a 3rd SSD on hand to act as a backup. Seems like such a poor suggestion for 99.999% of users that will never benefit from a barely noticeable improvement.

You're right except 99% of all users don't do RAID & among the 1% that do there'd probably be only a tenth (or less) that'll do RAID0 with SSD's & no form of reliable backup.

I don't understand what you're advocating? The chance of an SSD failure is the same however this being a RAID0 setup the system drive failure rate goes up to ~2x, with 2 SSD's, beyond that like I said (& you seemingly agreed) the latency is probably the least of one's concerns with such a setup. Also the benefits are definitely noticeable especially in certain disk intensive programs.

 

[mikeymikec]

Do you test all those HDDs before the no hassle return period is up? lakedude bought HDDs on sale but didn't get around to using them for many weeks and some of them didn't work.

These days I don't stock storage devices at all, I only order them on demand. In my current line of work it's not really necessary. Any drive I order is tested before I sell it.

---

Why on earth is RAID0 being discussed? It's a bad hack for extra performance which only carries relevance with slow storage devices and lots of storage bus overhead, which is the opposite scenario to modern SSDs and SATA 6Gbps!

 

[Blain]

Why on earth is RAID0 being discussed? It's a bad hack for extra performance which only carries relevance with slow storage devices and lots of storage bus overhead, which is the opposite scenario to modern SSDs and SATA 6Gbps!

Maybe someone was reading some very old articles extolling the benefits of RAID-0.

 

[corkyg]

+1!

 

[Ketchup]

It seems that some models get faster as they get bigger. But I believe as long as you stay at 240/256 or above, the difference is small.

 

[Wall Street]

A few reasons to go with the larger SSDs:

1. The more channels of flash are running the faster the SSD is. For example, the SanDisk Ultra II uses an 8 channel controller on the 480 and 960 GB models but only a 4 channel controller for the 120 and 240 GB models. Even comparing two drives with the same amount of channels, the controllers can usually extract some speed boost from additional parallelism in a larger drives because they have more flash dies.

2. SSDs can lose speed, especially write speed, if they are mostly full. SSD controllers are very good at taking advantage of spare area. Having a larger drive means that you can use a full 240-256 GB of drive space and still not have a performance slow down. If you use a 240 GB drive and put 225+ GB on it, the writes will slow down.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Maybe someone was reading some very old articles extolling the benefits of RAID-0.

It was dumb then, and its still dumb now. I remember when AT tested and concluded that RAID 0 even with hilariously overpriced Raptors is worthless for 99% of users, the RAID 0 fanboys were flaming him left and right probably because of some intense buyer remorse when a simple Google search then showed 2x sequential rates with lousy mobo RAID controllers meant nothing in the real world.

 

[redzo]

+ SSDs made sequential speeds numbers even more obsolete.
+ SSD RAID0 is even dumber than mechanical(HDD) ones. Unless it is done for backing up the data(RAID1) it has minimal to 0 cost/benefit even for enthusiast consumers.