Raid 1 between SSD and Standard Sata??

[DarrenHul]

Hi,

New here so hi everyone!

I have a question...

If I had say an 80GB or 160GB SSD as a main boot drive for a new PC build and installed it in a Raid 1 setup alongside a standard 72,000RPM Sata Magnetic hard drive, would this limit the read / write speed of the SSD to the level of the magnetic drive?

I want to use Raid 1 for fault tolerance reasons however I don't want to go to the expense of putting in two SSD drives if I can use a relatively inexpensive magnetic drive as the second drive in the Raid array.

Any thoughts or experiences shard on this subject would be greatly received.

Thanks,

Darren

 

[alaricljs]

It would be a total waste of the SSD. In fact, even if you chose to go with Linux and attempt the md_raid fun of configuring a write-intent bitmap, setting write-mostly, and specifying the HDD as write-behind.... it doesn't really have any positive effect.

So no, do not raid 1 an SSD to anything but a similar SSD.

On the other hand... regular backups are a good idea, and incrementals can save space on the destination.

 

[mvbighead]

It would be a total waste of the SSD. In fact, even if you chose to go with Linux and attempt the md_raid fun of configuring a write-intent bitmap, setting write-mostly, and specifying the HDD as write-behind.... it doesn't really have any positive effect.

So no, do not raid 1 an SSD to anything but a similar SSD.

On the other hand... regular backups are a good idea, and incrementals can save space on the destination.

Precisely this. If you have important data, just use the backup function to make sure you have a copy on both drives that are listed as separate volumes. Then have it perform the backup as often as you want.

 

[DarrenHul]

Well ok, thanks for the replies!

I thought this might be the case...

What I'm trying to achieve is a SSD boot drive (and all the performance associated with that) combined with some kind of instantly available back up boot drive. So if the SSD fails, then the machine can boot instantly from the backup drive and I can carry on working pretty much from where I left off.

Obviously at a later point I'd replace the SSD and switch back to that as the primary boot drive.

Any ideas on a solution for this scenario?

Thanks

Darren