Best way to make use of extra SSD?

[88keys]

So as per a recommendation by Charlie98, I bought two of these.
Crucial M500 240GB

Both my Main Desktop and Laptop (see sig)run 128GB Samsung 830s, and they both have 3Gbps SATA.
I'd like to have a little bit more local disk space on my Desktop so I see 2 possible options.

I could just put the crucial in my Desktop as a slave drive and have 368GB of local SSD space....

Or I could put the Crucial in my Laptop thus giving it more storage space, and then take the Samsung 830 out of my laptop and install it in my Desktop and run RAID 0 to make a total of 256GB of disk space and a small increase in performance.


I'm not even sure how much difference in real performance there will be between the Crucial and SSDs considering that I don't have 6Gbps SATA ports on either of these machines.

256GB would be a comfortable amount of space for my Desktop (although more is always better). I back things up over the NAS so the a failure wouldn't be the end of the world. The amount of disk space on the laptop is no big deal.



As for my performance needs on my Desktop go, I do video editing and audio mixing/mastering.

 

[lehtv]

You could use 64GB of the Samsung drive for caching the hard disk where you edit videos. Install OS on the M500, and use the rest of the Samsung drive as spare space in case your M500 flows over.

Not sure what I'd do with the second M500 if the laptop is just fine with 128GB.

RAID0 is definitely not worth it.

 

[Charlie98]

So as per a recommendation by Charlie98, I bought two of these.
Crucial M500 240GB
.

Send the spare one to me as a consolation prize... 😀

How full is your laptop drive? Unless it's over 70% or so I wouldn't bother swapping it out, unless you anticipate needing the space in the future.

I'd just throw both of the M500s in the desktop...

 

[tweakboy]

Your data files,, your pics your videos and what not. gl

 

[88keys]

Laptop is about 70% free ATM. I'm running Xubuntu and plan on trying out some Linux video editing programs pretty soon so the extra space may come in handy.

The other M500 is in my DAW workstation running XP (because it has to, and yes it is disconnected from the internet). Although Wav files don't use nearly as much space as HD video files so there isn't much need for more than 120GB, so I could put the 830 in there.


I know the 830 is a better performing SSD over the Crucial, but would I see any of that difference considering that none of my systems can take full advantage of it?

If I decide to go with having 2x M500, would it make sense to run RAID 0 just for the small gain in performance and the simplicity of it being seen as one single 480GB disk?

 

[razel]

Lot's of thing running through your mind. You have too many options and without SATAIII I would not fret over performance differences. With your laptop at 70% capacity I'd simplify. Get ready to sell all of them off ebay or whereever else. Now buy SSDs one size larger than you need when you find them on sale.

Do not mess with RAID 0 SSDs unless you want the learning experience of setting them up and then learn how to unset it since it's unnecessary it is for 95% of people.

 

[88keys]

I had a RAID set up years ago so how to do it isn't the most fresh thing in my memory, but not outside of my capabilities.
I bought 2 crucials mainly because they were on sale cheap and now I'm thinking of the best way to utilize it. I've been doing fine with 128GB, but more space would be nice and a small upgrade in that dept should serve me until my next build which will be late next year at the earliest.

There aren't alot of options really. I suppose I could have just asked whether it was worth running a RAID setup with 2 identical SSDs vs just popping the Crucial M500 as a secondary drive while keeping the OS on the Samsung 830. Those identical SSDs could either be the 120GB 830s or the 240GB M500s. The latter would yield greater storage, but the former is plenty.

The thing is that I'm not sure how much higher the likelihood of failure or stability issues are with SSD RAID setups vs HDD RAID setups. The RAID setup I had on my Athlon 64 machine BITD never gave me any headaches.

 

[Charlie98]

You have too many options and without SATAIII I would not fret over performance differences...

...With your laptop at 70% capacity I'd simplify.

That's kind of what I'm thinking... even the complexity of RAID on a SATA2 system isn't going to net you anything.

His laptop is at 30%... 70% free space.


88, I would just hang on to the one until you have a system worthy of installation or even RAID. (I'm not a big fan of RAID, I see very little benefit vs risk on most mainstream systems.)

 

[tweakboy]

Lol hitachi ? You must be kidding me. Its gonna break down, hopefully later then sooner... thx gl

 

[88keys]

Okay then. I'll just pop the extra M500 into my main PC as a secondary and run the OS off of the 830 like I had originally planned.