SSD 4 x RAID 0 worth it or not?

[Fight Game]

you're going to want the largest stripe possible with an ssd. I did several tests myself, and seen many other similar comparisons using different brand ssd's, and all came to the same conclusion. 128k. Unless you have a really good raid controller card which can do 256 or more, then do some testing yourself, otherwise do largest possible, hopefully 128.

 

Also - Both within the intel matrix storage controller options, and drive - properties, make sure write cache is turned on.

[horseboy666]

As am I.

 

Do you have AHCI enabled?

 

No, I chose RAID in the bios, unless you speak of something different?

[Fight Game]

stay with the raptors, though I will likely add another 2 to my raid

 

 

This seems like a terrible waste of money to me. The read/write won't double and even if it did, you probably wouldn't notice it. You're likely to lose some seek time. When loading several small files, which is what you're doing the vast majority of the time, it's all about seek time. If you want performance, I'd keep these in raid and use them as the storage, then get a fast single or 2x small ssd's for OS and the main programs you use.

[Waco]

No, I chose RAID in the bios, unless you speak of something different?

Ah, nevermind then.

 

Your poor performance is odd...you should be seeing MUCH higher numbers for everything.

 

Using HD Tune and my single drive (which has been in use for a few months now, no TRIM or anything used):

 

Minimum: 186.6

Maximum: 233.1

Average: 212.9

Access time: .1 ms

Burst rate: 190.7 MB/sec

CPU usage: -1.0%

 

Here's the file benchmark:

 

Edited September 6, 2009 by Waco

[Mikesnow]

This seems like a terrible waste of money to me.

I have 5 of them 2 in this current PC other 3 just sitting here on my desktop as paper weights at the moment. I will most likely, sell one in this pc and get rid of it, and be left with the other 2 so thought i'd put them to use until I go ssd.

[Zertz]

Just FYI, every time you bench your SSD you lose performance until you do a Secure Erase (or until TRIM)

[Waco]

Just FYI, every time you bench your SSD you lose performance until you do a Secure Erase (or until TRIM)

Only if you write to it.

[Fight Game]

uploaded 2 pics for those that were interested in where the write cache options were. For some reason in the device manager it is now saying I can't modify the setting, but it did before? Any way, I know when I enabled it through the intel matrix storage controller software, it made a significant difference in my benchmarks. Right click your raid, and select write back cache, if it's not already.

Edited September 7, 2009 by Fight Game

[horseboy666]

Forget it, my motherboard crashed, the raid went bye bye. Got a new board, threw my Velociraptor in, installed Windows 7, really I dont see THAT much of a difference between that and the SSD, dont care bout benchmarks, I care bout the feel of it.

 

So basically they are going back the SSD's, no need for RAID, too risky.

[Waco]

Forget it, my motherboard crashed, the raid went bye bye. Got a new board, threw my Velociraptor in, installed Windows 7, really I dont see THAT much of a difference between that and the SSD, dont care bout benchmarks, I care bout the feel of it.

 

So basically they are going back the SSD's, no need for RAID, too risky.

You should be able to see a pretty big difference over a Velociraptor. :shrug: I'm surprised you'd dump them after having a mobo failure. You've never seen them in a good config.

[horseboy666]

You should be able to see a pretty big difference over a Velociraptor. :shrug: I'm surprised you'd dump them after having a mobo failure. You've never seen them in a good config.

 

Because its not worth the risk of Raiding, i mean after only having them in RAID for like 2 days, a simple mobo fail loses all my stuff, its a good thing I didnt have anything really on there yet. Yes SSD vs the raptor is a bit better, not worth that price difference per gigabyte. I may be looking into the Crucial 256 GB SSD for 580 at ncix.com as a standalone drive, at least I wont have the risk of Raid, and it should be pretty fast.

 

Unless you guys can assure me that by getting a Raid controller such as the High point PCI-Express 4 channel cards, will not screw up. Meaning if my mobo fails, the RAID will still be intact, and that later on if I need to transfer to a new system, I can just take the RAID card out and plug into the new system and everything will be peachy?

 

This is the card I am looking at

 

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?d...cid=IOC.898.158

 

Highpoint RocketRaid

[Waco]

That's the point of using a real RAID card - you can move the array from card to card if the card fails. In any case, you should always back up at least your Users folder to another drive even if you're not using RAID.

 

Even if you use the motherboard RAID you can still recover it by using another motherboard with the same chipset.