What to pick - Single SSD or WD Caviar Black RAID 1

[thatsright]

Hi All. I asked a a while back, but now have a few more questions.

Building a new i7-920 Rig with X58 mobo/6GB Ram/Win 7 64-Bit. I've been debating getting the Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 or a single WD Caviar Black 1TB drive (or two in RAID Mirroring). In order of usage, here is what use my P4 2.4Ghz rig for now:

-Firefox
-MP3/CD playback
-Adobe Photoshop CS4
-Adobe Bridge
-Rip Audio CD's

I'd like to get a SSD and we all know why its a great drive and fast. But a few reasons not to get it personally:

a) Management of such small drive is a nightmare. I'll end up installing lots of apps on another drive, which will make backup jobs a mess.
b) Cost. If I run the caviar black drives in RAID Mirroring, it will only cost me an extra $100 vs. $250 for the SSD.
c) Perceived performance. Don't really care about faster boot times. After photos are loaded into Photoshop, it uses RAM and CPU pretty much.
d) Coming from a P4 rig with PATA drives, a Caviar Black SATA drive should be 'enough' of a performance kick correct?
e) SSD vs. WD SATA size. I shoot Nikon camera with NEF RAW files, and they need lots of room for storage.

A few other thoughts if I go with WD SATA drive(s) only:
1. I hear its PITA to setup RAID on x58 MOBOs and I really won't see any performance benefit . (Really want to do mirroring for data backup.)
2. I think cataloging in Adobe Bridge is much, MUCH faster with a SSD?
3. If I have a single SATA drive /w Win 7 installed, where do I offload the Windows Page file? I was thinking of putting it on a slower PATA hard drive as I hear its best to put the Photoshop scratch file on the fastest disk (WD Caviar) and DO NOT put the Win page file on the same drive??

With my points above, can anyone give me a better idea of what to go with? Within the hour I've concluded getting a SSD has too many negative trade-offs (cost/complicating storage/not noticing a performance benefit). Maybe I'll just be blown away going from PATA drives to Caviar Black SATA drives? Any photoshop users out there who can give a bit of input if you build a new rig?

 

[Rifter]

what do you want more, speed or space.

Thats the only thing to consider.

 

[Emulex]

go for the ssd. 160gb is plenty to load your apps; then a pair of 1TB in raid-0 to keep up.

while you are there doing 64bit; go for 12gb. adobe will eat that up.

Everyone who has an SSD notices it; then you get used to it. then you use a crapbox with disks and feel the misery.

 

[thatsright]

go for the ssd. 160gb is plenty to load your apps; then a pair of 1TB in raid-0 to keep up.

while you are there doing 64bit; go for 12gb. adobe will eat that up.

Everyone who has an SSD notices it; then you get used to it. then you use a crapbox with disks and feel the misery.

This type of solution will add $700 to the cost of my sytem. Waaay over budget. And 12GB of RAM will be complelty wasted as I'm not a super Photoshop user by any stretch. 6GB will do me well for the next two-three years.

 

[latch]

80gb intel g2 ssd with a 1TB caviar black. 6gb ram.

You should consider a better backup alternative to Raid 1 (mirroring) if that was your thoughts with respect to the mirroring comment.

 

[sxr7171]

what do you want more, speed or space.

Thats the only thing to consider.

Well said. I have never in my life needed more than 80GB for an OS partition. Set your NEFs on the 1TB but put your scratch file on the SSD.

 

[sxr7171]

80gb intel g2 ssd with a 1TB caviar black. 6gb ram.

You should consider a better backup alternative to Raid 1 (mirroring) if that was your thoughts with respect to the mirroring comment.

100% I would add a WHS for backup when feasible. I don't consider RAID to be a backup. Investing in proper data storage and backup is a necessity. The last thing anyone wants is to lose all their data. The data is worth more than your i7 rig itself. You can build one for $300 easily.

 

[railman]

I totally agree with sxr7171. You would gain the most performance from a setup like that.

 

[COPOHawk]

80gb intel g2 ssd with a 1TB caviar black. 6gb ram.

You should consider a better backup alternative to Raid 1 (mirroring) if that was your thoughts with respect to the mirroring comment.

Exactly what Latch said.

I would forget the RAID and go with a product like Norton Ghost for daily imaging (backup). Much easier to recover if things go south.

HTH.

 

[Adrenaline]

What would be some suggestions for backing up stuff outside of RAID 1? I have done a little looking for omething along the lines of software or just manually doing it but not coming up with much information.

I use 2 Raptor 74 GB drives for my C drive now and have been thinking SSD or a 640 WD Caviar Black along with two 1 TB WD Caviar Black for other stuff. One of the backups acting as a mirror.

 

[Emulex]

you need to have two 1TB External drives. Ghost/BESR8.5 full (not incremenetal) disk images daily - rotate one off-site as fire/flood/theft would make you the fool. AES-256 encryption in case you have sensitive data.

 

[Seero]

First, Raid 1 is NOT a backup. It serves as a protection against hard drive failures. Things like viruses, motherboard/raid controller failure, lighting and alike disasters are not protected. Drives will age, and aged hardware may fail to function. Keep in mind that all drive in the raid experiences the same ware and tear, meaning that if one drive died due to ware and tear, then all drives are probably going to die soon. It is better to use the drive independently to avoid unnecessary wear and tear, and if info is that important, you should create a off site backup.

Now SSD don't just make PC boot faster. In fact, booting time is a hype. What is important is the program/data loading time. You don't need to wait for data to load into RAM first to enjoy the smoothness, simply because SSDs are RAM itself.

There are programs you want to load really fast, ie games, and there are programs you don't really care about the speed, ie movies. So you can have 2 program files for these different purpose. Advance user can use mklink, "symbolic link", to minimize the use of the SSD.

It isn't one or the other, you can have them both, speed and space.

 

[jvroig]

You don't need to wait for data to load into RAM first to enjoy the smoothness, simply because SSDs are RAM itself.

I hope it is just that you chose the wrong words, and not that you have the wrong concept in mind.

Taken literally, what you say can easily be interpreted wrong. People don't need to wait for data to load into RAM, true, because SSDs are faster than HDDs, so it feels instantaneous. But the data is still loaded into RAM first. No ifs, no buts.

And saying "SSD is RAM itself" is also off.

In fact, SSDs are not made of DRAM chips. They are made of NAND flash (MLC or SLC).

 

[thatsright]

Well ya son's o bitches, I got the Intel SSD. I definitely went waay over my budget ($800-1000 ended up being about $1250) and 'splurged' just on this drive. I know in 2-3 years I will look back and laugh at paying so much, for so little storage. By then, I'll be able to get a 500GB+ Gen 4(?) SSD for like a $100 or something.

But if ya live on the cutting edge, your going to bleed quite a bit...

That being said, is there a guide on how to 'prep' the Intel 80GB SSD drive for Win 7 clean install? I know I will probably need to update the SSD firmware, but what to do after this? Anything?

 

[rcpratt]

Well ya son's o bitches, I got the Intel SSD. I definitely went waay over my budget ($800-1000 ended up being about $1250) and 'splurged' just on this drive. I know in 2-3 years I will look back and laugh at paying so much, for so little storage. By then, I'll be able to get a 500GB+ Gen 4(?) SSD for like a $100 or something.

But if ya live on the cutting edge, your going to bleed quite a bit...

That being said, is there a guide on how to 'prep' the Intel 80GB SSD drive for Win 7 clean install? I know I will probably need to update the SSD firmware, but what to do after this? Anything?

Prep:
1) Check if the SSD has the TRIM firmware installed (02HA or 02HD).
2) If it doesn't, install the firmware. It would probably be easiest to do this on your old system, before you install the OS on the SSD, but doing it after is fine, too.
3) Make sure your SATA mode is set to AHCI (not IDE).
4) Install the Intel SSD Toolbox and run it once after you're up and running.
5) Enjoy.

 

[thatsright]

Prep:
1) Check if the SSD has the TRIM firmware installed (02HA or 02HD).
2) If it doesn't, install the firmware. It would probably be easiest to do this on your old system, before you install the OS on the SSD, but doing it after is fine, too.
3) Make sure your SATA mode is set to AHCI (not IDE or compatibility).
4) Install the Intel SSD Toolbox and run it once after you're up and running.
5) Enjoy.

My current system cannot do SATA connections. Its THAT OLD!! I have a IBM T60 laptop with a SATA drive.

1. Since the SSD drive is originaly designed for laptops, could I remove my current HD from the T60, insert the Intel drive and then update the firmware this way?
2. I have heard talk of 'alignment' or aligning a SSD drive. What does the mean ecxactly? Do I have to do any of this?
4. When Win 7 formats the drive during setup, do I need to select a 'default sector size etc.
3. During Win 7 install, do I need to have AHCI in compatibility mode? Once the Install is finished, do I change SATA to another mode?
4. What will the Intel SSD Toolbox do for me? I just checked Intel's website and it is not downloadable at this time.