How do you guys feel about using SSDs in RAID?

[Greenlepricon]

For my next build I want to try and go for completely using SSDs both for energy and noise reasons. I am considering running 2 512Gb MX100's in RAID 0 just to see how it is. I have heard about how there may not be much, if any benefit to doing this, and the chance of a crash obviously goes up. On the other hand, people have praised the setup. With this in mind, I was wondering what you guys think of it, and if you have experience what do you think? Other RAID configurations are open to debate too if they make more sense. I've thought about going to a 1Tb Samsung drive as well, but was firstly curious on what everyone's thoughts are on this topic.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You are better off getting a Crucial M550 1TB drive.

 

[Engineer]

I'm using two Toshiba drives in a RAID 0 configuration and can't tell a difference (aside from benchmarks). I would just get a 1TB drive, as Larry stated above.

Also, it's hit or miss to get TRIM to work with RAID (certain boards and certain drivers - although it may be better now - not sure).

 

[npaladin-2000]

Go with a single 1 TB SSD. I prefer the Samsungs personally, but the Crucials are good too. It's not going to be noticeably faster or slower in either config unless you do some serious disk-destroying tasks. But it will be more reliable, and as mentioned, TRIM will work more reliably as well. As a rule I dislike RAID-0 (RAID is supposed to be for redundancy anyway, but RAID-0 is basically zero redundancy).

Anyway, in your case I'd do a single drive, and a daily or weekly disk image backup using Windows 7's backup utility or Acronis TrueImage or something else along those lines. That's all the redundancy most people need, assuming they can't run entirely off of a Chromebook.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I'd just get a single higher capacity drive. RAID is unnecessary for SSDs outside benchmarks, and you avoid the whole reliability issue.

Also, it's hit or miss to get TRIM to work with RAID (certain boards and certain drivers - although it may be better now - not sure).

Avoids that whole mess too.

 

[Railgun]

Been doing it for the last 3 years or so. 4x OCZ Vertex 3 120GBs off an Areca 1880i. Originally had it off an Adaptec 2405. Works fine. Depends on your use case.

TRIM is irrelevant if the disk has good onboard GC. In my case, there's a good amound of idle time so TRIM isn't an issue.

 

[smitbret]

For my next build I want to try and go for completely using SSDs both for energy and noise reasons. I am considering running 2 512Gb MX100's in RAID 0 just to see how it is. I have heard about how there may not be much, if any benefit to doing this, and the chance of a crash obviously goes up. On the other hand, people have praised the setup. With this in mind, I was wondering what you guys think of it, and if you have experience what do you think? Other RAID configurations are open to debate too if they make more sense. I've thought about going to a 1Tb Samsung drive as well, but was firstly curious on what everyone's thoughts are on this topic.

If you are doing it for fun, I can see the draw. How awesome would it be to benchmark 4x128GB SSDs in RAID 0 and post that around the web?

Then again, how much fun will it be to look at my checking account and see the $350 I spent for 500GB of storage that I could have had the same real world performance from an SSD (OS) + Spinner (Archival Storage) for $130. Then how PO'd am I when 1 of those SSDs goes bad and I just lost everything on the array?

For bragging rights it would be awesome. For actual use, it's a huge waste of money and risky.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I'd just get a single higher capacity drive. RAID is unnecessary for SSDs outside benchmarks, and you avoid the whole reliability issue.

This. Unless you have very particular needs that a single consumer-level product doesn't currently exist for (you NEED a 2,3,4 TB SSD) you're probably wasting your money RAID'ing your SSDs. Heck, since you're only using a single controller, you're almost certainly saving money on the single capacity drive.

 

[Railgun]

For bragging rights it would be awesome. For actual use, it's a huge waste of money and risky.

What's the difference? One drive dies in either case and your data is toast. Has nothing to do with bragging rights. As mentioned, it depends on your use case.

And anyone with half a brain would backup their data anyway.

 

[Harrod]

I use 2 60's in raid 0, honestly the jump to a SSD was much more noticeable than raiding them. I do like how I can boot into windows in about 8 seconds. That being said the next time I do a system update, I will probably raid 4 drives just because they will cheaper at that time. I don't tend to keep anything of value on my gaming system. Most stuff that I worry about loosing is backed up online.

 

[smitbret]

What's the difference? One drive dies in either case and your data is toast. Has nothing to do with bragging rights. As mentioned, it depends on your use case.

And anyone with half a brain would backup their data anyway.

Good point, but in my scenario, there are 2 drives that would have to fail to lose ALL data.

But yeah, backup, backup, backup.

It has everything to do with bragging rights. What home use can you conceive that would need 4 SSDs in a RAID 0? What would you be able to do that is discernably quicker?

 

[Railgun]

Good point, but in my scenario, there are 2 drives that would have to fail to lose ALL data.

But yeah, backup, backup, backup.

It has everything to do with bragging rights. What home use can you conceive that would need 4 SSDs in a RAID 0? What would you be able to do that is discernably quicker?

Photo/video

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, I've had three cups of Espresso already this morning, and the caffeine turned my brain-cells inside-out. So I'll "throw in" on this.

I'm speaking exclusively to the home enthusiast or hobbyist. "Mainstreamers" don't much explore these issues. They buy OEM systems and take what they get. Some "Gamer-Mainstreamers" might pay top-dollar for some Alienware rig or similar top-end, water-cooled niche product. Or we can take a look at Maximum PC's "Dream Machine of the [year]." Recently, those guys went over the edge: It was a project costing between $15,000 and $30,000. So forget this year's Dreamer. Look at earlier years.

We "got into" this RAID fetish for performance with low-speed IDE or SCSI drives. That is, they were a bottleneck then, even if people didn't call them "low-speed." From ATA-133 to SATA-150, to SATA-II and -III. All bottlenecked electro-mechanical technology. And if you run a 5-drive RAID 5 or 6 (HDDs), you're gobbling more and more watts of power to keep that array running. OF COURSE! YOU ALL KNOW THIS -- OF COURSE!!

Now you can get an 840 or MX100 that uses a fraction of a watt even when it's "busy." SATA-III limits your performance for SSDs in single-drive AHCI mode to ~500+ MB/s sequential read-rate.

You can double that in the "true hardware" sense with a RAID0, increasing the speed further with an array of 3 or more. OR -- you can use the RAPID or other RAM-caching options: with enough RAM available, this can push the bench scores for sequential reads to 6,000 MB/s.

IF this is a "client workstation" or simply "enthusiast PC" for a wide range of usage -- everything from gaming to HT to business, graphics and other applications -- the "phony" Ram-caching alternative makes more sense than the money spent on a RAID0 (or RAID-anything).

Frankly, a single SSD without any caching gimmick makes a lot more sense.

We ran into this snag over the last few years over "TRIM" implementation for RAID-mode SSDs. Supposedly, this was fixed with old-mobo BIOS fixes and newer-gen boards.

But it still doesn't seem worth the expense. SATA-III will fall by the wayside. I forgot at the moment what takes its place, but the bottleneck opens up again.

This takes me back to a comment I made for another thread about 4K HD. If the end-user can't discern the difference, then the higher level of performance seems irrelevant.

 

[npaladin-2000]

Photo/video

No chance, not photo, and not most basic video tasks either. And then you get to where you're CPU or RAM constrained instead.

 

[Railgun]

Ok

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Ok

It also depends partly on the point from which one started.

My first SSD and its deployment began with my Z68 motherboard in 2011 and the ISRT (with Intel IRST) SSD-caching/HDD-acceleration. I don't know for sure whether there was EVER an issue regarding TRIM, since the SSD's "RAID0" mode did not involve two disks, and the accelerated HDD didn't "participate" in that RAID0 configuration. Others had trouble over the TRIM issue.

But like I said, that's apparently all been addressed. It still goes back to the myriad issues -- whether you could lose all your data or part of it with RAID0, how much money you want to spend or need to spend, whether the performance gains even mean anything, whether you regard the RAM-caching feature (of Samsung) requiring AHCI-mode to be "real" or "phony."

You could still argue that it adds an "aspect of complexity" to your hardware configuration, but as much as I follow my own dogma about that, it is not "significant" complexity . . . .

 

[MongGrel]

I had put off buying SSD's for a long time myself till about a year ago and finally bought a couple Samsung Evo 120s I run in RAID0 for the OS, but had to pick up a SATA 3 card for em.

Don't even use RAPID myself.

But I all ready have 4x1TB WD RE3's on an Areca hardware RAID card for storage.

I'd just get a larger single SSD these days if redoing things on a newer system.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I had put off buying SSD's for a long time myself till about a year ago and finally bought a couple Samsung Evo 100s I run in RAID0 for the OS, but had to pick up a SATA 3 card for em.

Don't even use RAPID myself.

But I all ready have 4x1TB WD RE3's on an Areca hardware RAID card for storage.

I'd just get a larger single SSD these days if redoing things on a newer system.

And you're still making sense with that.

I do not believe you can use RAPID for RAID-mode -- single-drive or otherwise. IN FACT -- it requires AHCI-mode. The conversion is easy -- in fact MS has a "Fix-It" button on their web-site. Not worth it to you, unless you replace the pair in RAID0 with a single of greater capacity.

Now that we're "on this topic," I'd like to hear SOMEBODY who has a RAID0 of Sammies or other SSDs TELL ME -- that life is so much better with that configuration you wouldn't recommend anything else. I WANT to hear someone make a strong justification.

But so far -- here -- nada . . .

 

[Greenlepricon]

Thanks for all of the responses guys. It's definitely interesting to hear everyone's experiences and suggestions on this kind of thing.

For me it's a hypothetical situation as 2x512 MX100's costs more or less the same amount of money as a single 1Tb EVO. The pc is firstly for gaming, second for some programs such as ArcGIS and light modeling (likely cpu limited), and benchmarking is last. I always have a backup and since building computers is a hobby that doesn't much affect my career, data loss wouldn't be an issue as long as my backup doesn't crash with it.

So to be clear, I just wanted to see if it's worth it from an enthusiast's perspective. I just want 1 Tb of space, but will be using a small case with a small PSU, so I would like it to be as quiet as possible and am trying to cut out watts, hence my decision for SSDs only. Otherwise, I'm happy to listen to as many opinions as possible until it comes time to build, as it's next to impossible to find a straightforward answer online. Thanks all!

 

[h9826790]

For the current generation high speed SSD. The RAID 0 setup should cause you more trouble than real world performance gain. Therefore, a single 1T SDD should be a better option for most of normal home users.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I just use 1 x 750 GB Samsung 840 EVO for my gaming PC's game installs drive D :, and an old 80 GB Intel SSD for the boot drive C :.

I prefer a small, separate OS drive for easier backups, so I can do an OS image in 30-40 GB instead of adding 300+ GB of Steam games I can just re-download.

The Samsung 840 is fast enough that game loading bottlenecks are from the CPU processing rather than the SSD speed. Also, with SSD's the larger models generally have more cache and faster I/O. And RAID0 does roughly double the chance of losing your data. Finally since SSDs do best with plenty of empty space it helps to keep that space in a single drive instead of splitting it up.

So no RAID0 for me.

 

[Cerb]

Large copies within the volume will be about twice as fast in RAID 0. The rest won't be much, if any, different.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Large copies within the volume will be about twice as fast in RAID 0. The rest won't be much, if any, different.

Aren't mpg or wtv or dvr-ms files "large" files? What other types of large files can you have? Certain database systems?

I'd think that games would be programmed to load larger segments-- modules, dlls, libraries -- into memory and all at once. But the usage would be different.

The media files are best stored on the largest device with the slowest throughput. The reason: the throughput is ample to assure the proper frame-rate; there is no reason to read the file any faster.

Well -- beat me up, comment, support, defeat -- whatever. This is just off the top of my head.

 

[Cerb]

Aren't mpg or wtv or dvr-ms files "large" files? What other types of large files can you have? Certain database systems?

I'd think that games would be programmed to load larger segments-- modules, dlls, libraries -- into memory and all at once. But the usage would be different.

The media files are best stored on the largest device with the slowest throughput. The reason: the throughput is ample to assure the proper frame-rate; there is no reason to read the file any faster.

Well -- beat me up, comment, support, defeat -- whatever. This is just off the top of my head.

First, large copies, as in total size of the data being copied, not individual file size.

Second, in volume copies. Copies within the same volume are going to be limited to at most half of the pure read or write performance, whichever is lower, plus overhead from the OS and file system, plus that most SSDs are at lest somewhat slower in mixed read/write cases than pure read or write. For example, making a backup in between trying different game mods, on the same SSD, I get "stuck" with ~200MBps speeds. That would be more like ~20MBps on an HDD with plenty of free space (I tested it with Skyrim, on a 2TB 7200 RPM Seagate), so it's still quite acceptable to me, but is one of the few cases where I, as a human, can outrun a single SSD.

Third, reading or writing files, but not doing both, is generally going to be limited by some serial factor of the program doing the read or writing, on top of the SSD's own limitations, except for very basic operations like file copying, or mass CRC checking. Most read operations are synchronous, for instance, and the program as written ends up limiting the maximum useful queue depth. That will allow per-read latency to possibly matter (come on, NVMe!), but not total bandwidth or potential IOPS, beyond a point (which most current SSDs have gone past).

For general usage, it's a waste.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

First, large copies, as in total size of the data being copied, not individual file size.

Second, in volume copies. Copies within the same volume are going to be limited to at most half of the pure read or write performance, whichever is lower, plus overhead from the OS and file system, plus that most SSDs are at lest somewhat slower in mixed read/write cases than pure read or write. For example, making a backup in between trying different game mods, on the same SSD, I get "stuck" with ~200MBps speeds. That would be more like ~20MBps on an HDD with plenty of free space (I tested it with Skyrim, on a 2TB 7200 RPM Seagate), so it's still quite acceptable to me, but is one of the few cases where I, as a human, can outrun a single SSD.

Third, reading or writing files, but not doing both, is generally going to be limited by some serial factor of the program doing the read or writing, on top of the SSD's own limitations, except for very basic operations like file copying, or mass CRC checking. Most read operations are synchronous, for instance, and the program as written ends up limiting the maximum useful queue depth. That will allow per-read latency to possibly matter (come on, NVMe!), but not total bandwidth or potential IOPS, beyond a point (which most current SSDs have gone past).

For general usage, it's a waste.

I like to think I'd come intuitively to a similar conclusion, but your explanation is better.

RAID configurations had always been discussed in a server context until we tried to use them at the client end. Multi-user situations must change the value of it. I just think (and read "general usage" here), the single SSD changes the whole ball-game for a client-workstation.

It's also true what the OP said about price and quantity: He could have two drives, RAID0, and pay the same price as one, single unit twice the size of either. But someone else pointed out that it could be more trouble than it's worth. "Worth" meaning a performance enhancement that would "make a difference."