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One 60GB SSD or two 30GB SSDs in Raid 0?

J

jez006

Member
Hi everyone. Did a quick search on the forums and didn't come up with much! So sorry if I am asking an old question....

My price range is £100 - £150. I've read good things about the OCZ vertex drives but welcome any advice since I have next to no knowledge on SSDs...

These are possibilities:

OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read 285MB/s Write 275MB/s - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/225415 - £99.99

OCZ Vertex Turbo 60GB 2.5" Solid State Hard Drive 64MB Cache 240MB/s Read and 145MB/s Write - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169574 - £135

Not sure why the faster hard drive is more expensive though....

Intel drives in the same price bracket appear to have a much lower write speed on paper...

Or I could get two 30GB drives in Raid 0 such as:

OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 30GB Solid State Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache 230MB/s Read, 135 MB/s Write - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160730 - £70 x 2 = £140

I don't really play games on my computer. I watch films, use 3d modelling software (Pro engineer) and photoshop occasionally, so I suppose I have grounds for an SSD upgrade 😀

I built my computer almost 2 years ago but at the time the components were almost top of the range and I think the hard drive is the weak link atm (windows experience index also gives my hard drive a 5.8). I've got a Raptor sitting in my drawer because I couldn't stand the noise..looking forward to a silent hard drive...

Anyway, specs:

Intel E8400 3Ghz overclocked to 3.5Ghz
Asus Rampage formula motherboard (Intel X48 chipset)
4GB DDR2-800 (or possibly 1066) OCZ Reaper Ram
EVGA 8800GTS 512MB GPU
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
....and 4 slow hard drives 😛

Any suggestions welcome!

Thanks in advance,

Jez
 
The Vertex2 is a newer drive, that's the one you want to go with.

As far as RAID goes, you lose TRIM support, but I found that the performance increase from RAID more than makes up for it (on paper). Truth is, you'll probably not feel a difference between any two modern SSDs, they are all so much faster than mechanical drives.

That said, I run 2x 80gb Intels, and would purchase them again over a single 160.
 
Thanks for the quick reply. I thought TRIM was so that SSDs last longer and their performance does not degrade over time as opposed to an actual performance increase?

It seems my choice comes down to 2 Vertexs in Raid 0 or the newer model Vertex 2 by itself. I guess I need someone that's tried both! Probably not much in it but I want to make the right choice...

Why did you go for intel? And would you still choose 2x 80gb if a new 160gb had just come out at the same price?
 
I bought my drives on release day, but they still aren't a bad choice, if the price is right. I'm not often copying off of something that can saturate my drives' sustained write, anyway.

Why not 2 Vertex2's in RAID 0?

TRIM does prevent performance degradation, but the Vertex2 drives also have an idle garbage collection that works well enough. Even in a degraded performance state, which garbage collection will prevent, RAID should still be faster than a single drive.
 
One SSD. You'll want TRIM for longetivity, and the gain of one SSD is already so big that it'd seem the gains of two SSD's over one would seem very negligible.
 
Unless you really need the transfer throughput, RAID0 on SSD will not make a tangible difference for the vast majority of users.

Heck, I say the same thing about RAID0 on newer disc drives. It really is mostly for e-peen bragging rights for most enthusiast users of RAID0.

Get the 60GB Vertex 2 and stick with it, save some money.
 
Both the Vertex Turbo, and Vertex Series run the Indilinx BearFoot controller, while the Vertex 2 is SandForce. For an OS drive, the small file operations (4K), and the fact that there is virtually no seek time, is what makes the SSD so attractive.

Both Indilinx and SF have great sequential performance, but the SF drive works much better with small files, and it also compresses data, leaving empty flash for the controller to use for wear leveling/garbage collection.

Considering the price, the Vertex 2 is a much better deal. You don't want to use a pair of Indilinx drives without TRIM support, since, unlike the SF drives, they aren't known for their garbage collection.
 
Yuriman said:
Why not 2 Vertex2's in RAID 0?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately slightly out of my price range, at about £180 for a pair...

bunnyfubbles said:
Unless you really need the transfer throughput, RAID0 on SSD will not make a tangible difference for the vast majority of users
Click to expand...

Do you mean faster read/write speed? I won't be writing much to the system drive after everything is installed...does faster read speed mean applications open faster?

It seems most people are leaning towards a single SSD. I've been thinking and I don't know if 60GB will cut it for my system drive so I think I'll go for 80GB.

Any suggestions for the best 80GB (or 90GB since OCZ do not have 80gb drives...) SSD out now for less than £150?

Something like http://www.dabs.com/products/ocz-tec...rive-75J8.html ?

Thanks,

Jez
 
I do not know what is going on. I posted a reply 3 hours ago and it said that a moderator had to okay it. It's still not up......
 
and now this one comes up straight away thats just great. Now i have to type a long post again because it's lost.

mods??
 
Basically my last post came down to:

What is the best SSD at the moment for no more than £150? I've decided I need at lest 80gb for my system hard drive.

Cheers guys,

Jez
 
I use FireFox, and there is an addon called Lazarus that recovers forms. It's pretty handy. For a long post, I usually use a word processor. I discard the text after posting, but Lazarus remembers. Other browsers probably have something similar.

Think about why you need at least 80Gb. My OS/Programs partition is only 20Gb, and I have several large programs installed- although no games. I keep no data in the OS partition. Since games don't benefit that much from an SSD ("only" twice as fast for sequential files), perhaps you can do with 60Gb. Since SF drives compress the data (and don't tell the OS), filling a SF drive to capacity leaves a substantial amount of empty nand- that could be used as spare aria by the controller.

I recommend the Vertex 2 for a drive that small, but any SF based drive would be fine I think.

You can get a 40Gb Vertex 2 for about $110 in the States. Or, for $160ish there is the 60Gb Vertex 2. Just be careful you don't end up with the Vertex 2-7/8 for $136. (Although I see you save $145 here, and it usually ships within 10 days. Not a huge capacity, and it weighs 8 pounds. 8 pounds? I think our president has a set of these.)
 
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Yeh I see what you mean Fish, I don't really need 80GB... lemme think...

OS - 20GB (windows 7 64bit)
photoshop - 2gb
pro engineer - 2gb
other small programs - maybe 3gb
odd game here and there could take up a fair bit

= 27gb + games

Thing is I keep a backup of my music on my system drive...which is over 30gb! I'm guessing you'll recommend getting an external hard drive for that... hmmmm..

You're very lucky over there to have newegg we don't have any online store nearly as good in the UK. Last time I checked they didn't ship to the UK either...I'll check again now...Am I still covered under warranties etc. for foreign bought products?

Wow that's one nice salt shaker. That's my next purchase 😛

Thanks for the help Campy 😉

So everyone agrees I should go for an OCZ vertex 2 then.. Not an Intel or anything else?

Thanks everyone,

Jez
 
btw has the vertex turbo been discontinued? there are still a lot of sites selling it but it's not on the OCZ website..
 
jez006 said:
Thing is I keep a backup of my music on my system drive...which is over 30gb! I'm guessing you'll recommend getting an external hard drive for that.
Click to expand...

If you move your system to an SSD, that clears a bunch of space from the drive it resides on now. The backup volume could stay where it is. It won't benefit from being on the SSD.

I assume you have a separate disk that holds the data that your system drive is backing up. If not, a drive failure/loss would wipe out both instances, of course.
 
FishAk said:
If you move your system to an SSD, that clears a bunch of space from the drive it resides on now. The backup volume could stay where it is. It won't benefit from being on the SSD.

I assume you have a separate disk that holds the data that your system drive is backing up. If not, a drive failure/loss would wipe out both instances, of course.
Click to expand...

lol here's the problem...my desktop has 4 hard drive slots and they are all taken...

1tb - films (dc++ at uni hehe)
640gb - films, tv series, work, music
120gb - tv series, music

...and my system drive

maybe i should upgrade the 120gb...

i actually have my music backed up on 2 drives i'm quite paranoid of losing it.

so do you think i should upgrade the 120gb and get a vertex 2 60gb? i'm literally on the verge of ordering this i just want to get the best ssd in my price range. sorry if i'm repeating myself!

Thanks,

Jez
 
You should most definitely upgrade the 120Gb drive. The higher density of the modern drives make them far superior to the older ones. It will also allow you to keep multiple instances of your files so you don't loose any due to a drive failure.

Take a look at this drive comparison. You will see that the Samsung F3 1Tb drive is pretty good drive for $50 to $70. That's only about $0.06/Gb.

Since the 120Gb drive is probably only half or less as good as the newer drives, it makes it only worth about $3.50- or about 1 beer.
 
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