SSDs and their usage.

ibex333

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2005
4,094
123
106
I just bought two identical 64GB SSD drives. Awesome deal on Buy.com, they were $64 each!
http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-64g...218194457.html

Now I am wondering how to best use them and what configuration will give me the most speed and performance.

I can:

a)Use them in RAID 0
b)Use one for storage, and one for SRT (Z68 caching technology)
c)Just use both for storage.

Which one do you think will be the most useful to me, given that I use my computer mostly for gaming with some basic everyday use like college homework, internet browsing, word processing, etc. ?
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
6
81
What do you mean by "storage"? Best way to use it would be either RAID-0 with Windows installed and often used programs, or as two drives, one with OS and the other with often used programs on the other.
For "storage" (which to me means video files, music etc) you would want mechanicals, since access times and random transfer rates don't matter, you are just doing semi-frequent mostly sequential accesses.
 

ibex333

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2005
4,094
123
106
What do you mean by "storage"? Best way to use it would be either RAID-0 with Windows installed and often used programs, or as two drives, one with OS and the other with often used programs on the other.
For "storage" (which to me means video files, music etc) you would want mechanicals, since access times and random transfer rates don't matter, you are just doing semi-frequent mostly sequential accesses.

That is what I meant. To install OS on it. Not storage as in keeping files there that are not being used every day.

The question is, am I better off installing programs on both of these, or running them in RAID 0?
 

Uhtrinity

Platinum Member
Dec 21, 2003
2,263
202
106
I picked up two of those and set them up in a Raid 0 array on an AMD onboard controller. The drives are being used for the OS. Here are the performance results under CrystalDiskMark:

Read Write
Seq 446MB/s 252MB/s
512k 280MB/s 208MB/s
4k 10 32MB/s 32MB/s
4k QD32 25MB/s 31MB/s
 
Last edited:

groberts101

Golden Member
Mar 17, 2011
1,390
0
0
Raid them.

Using an SSD to cache an SSD is not what the SRT app was designed for and would not do much other than reduce some writes to the main OS drive(which wouldn't be as much of a concern with 2 drives in R0 for increased capacity). You'd be leaving a lot on the table with that method.
 

Ghiddy

Senior member
Feb 14, 2011
306
0
0
RAID 0 is your best, fastest option. It is also the easiest to set up and use.

I'm doing RAID 0 via my mobo's onboard SATA raid with 2 SSD's. The only thing to watch out for is that your data is backed up in case something happens to the RAID array. For example, my work is always stored on DropBox and Subversion so at any time if my computer blows up I don't lose anything too important.
 

LokutusofBorg

Golden Member
Mar 20, 2001
1,065
0
76
I don't think he meant use one SSD to cache for the other SSD in SRT. I would assume he has a mechanical already, and would use that in SRT.

I would personally lean towards that. Use one SSD for your OS drive, and the other one in SRT with your mechanical drive.