Opinions on SSD RAID


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My 64 gig SSD just isn't cutting the mustard anymore.  It's been fast and problem-free, but I need more space for all my games (damn Steam Summer Sale and Humble Bundles).  It really sucks loading from a platter drive when you have an SSD, so I've decided to go with a pair of SSDs in a RAID 0 for a bit more speed and space.  I'm currently looking at two Mushkin Enhanced Chronos drives for a disk stripe.

 

The drive-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226237

 

240 gigs at $115 bucks isn't too bad.  A lot of SSDs on Newegg say there's RAID support, but not this drive.  Will two of these work? Edit:  Went into the specs and it does have RAID support.  Opinions on other drives in the same price/performance/size range?  Remember that I'm going to be buying at least two drives for this setup.

 

Last thing, please don't try and dissuade me from a RAID 0.  Yes, I know if one drive fails my data goes with it.  I'm ordering a WD 1 TB Black drive with these as well.  I have plenty of backup and storage space options (7 internal, 1 external as of now) so loosing my games and a Windows install is no big deal.  I just want the speed with more space for games.

 

Thanks!

 

Relevant specs-

Antec 1200

Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3

Core i7 2600k @ 4.0 GHz

GeForce GTX 760

Seasonic X 650 Gold

Too many hard drives

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With the Intel mainboard RAID-stuff you can just raid any SATA drives (identical ones = best). I have two 64GB Toshiba SSD drives in my laptop in RAID0 and they've been running without a single error for over three years now.

 

I'm not a big fan of Mushkin. They're probably fine but I'm sure you can get better performance from Samsung (840 Evo or 840 Pro) and better value for money from Crucial (MX100). Since you want storage and are doing RAID anyway, I'd go with two 256GB Crucial MX100's.

 

Edit: that Mushkin is ancient in PC terms. First listed on Amazon almost three years ago! They run an oldish SandForce controller and those are notorious for wonky reliability. That specific one is also reported as one that fails early and often. SandForces used to be faster, but pretty much all recent drives just max out SATA3 anyway.

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I'm just going to use the on-board controller for now... I think.  ######.  Now I don't know.  Have a good controller card in mind that's not too pricy?

 

Thanks for the heads up.  Looking into the Crucial drive now...

 

Edit:  The only reason I wasn't going with the 840 pro is due to price.  I might reconsider going with the pros and holding off on another HDD for a minute.  Too many decisions today!

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Don't go for Mushkin.. buy the best.. $20 more won't kill you.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248&cm_re=Samsung_EVO-_-20-147-248-_-Product

 

My score above is from 2x250gb Samsung EVOs

 

If I go with the Evo, I might as well get the Pro...

 

Edit:  Just checked the Pro out again.  The price difference is a bit more than I'd like even though I'd love two for this project.  I think I will go with two Evo drives.

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I'm just going to use the on-board controller for now... I think.  ######.  Now I don't know.  Have a good controller card in mind that's not too pricy?

 

Thanks for the heads up.  Looking into the Crucial drive now...

 

Edit:  The only reason I wasn't going with the 840 pro is due to price.  I might reconsider going with the pros and holding off on another HDD for a minute.  Too many decisions today!

 

Onboard controller is fine. In Windows it's easy to set up and the CPU hit is barely noticeable especially with those specs. You're not running a data-starved server, your SSD will serve to speed up game loads and you will probably get zero benefit from using a PCIe RAID controller.

 

Also, since you're doing RAID anyway, don't spend almost double on a drive that is barely 10% faster (840 Pro vs MX100). The 840 EVO is probably a very good compromise, but I'd really just go for the MX100. You could even go 2x512GB for not much more than 2x256GB 840 Pro and do away with mechanical drives altogether.

If I go with the Evo, I might as well get the Pro...

 

What? Why? The performance benefit is so low. AnandTech recently did a review on the MX100 and it was always about the same as the 840 EVO. About the same amount of wins and loses.

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Ambroos,  I'll stick to the OB RAID controller then.  Thanks for your input and help.  I'm going later today to Fry's to grab the Samsung drives.  I've used two (840, 840 Pro) in builds for friends and they work very well. 

 

 

In the future if everything goes well, I would like to RAID0 6 to 8 SSDs and then I'll need a controller.  But that's not for at least a few months if at all. 

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Ambroos,  I'll stick to the OB RAID controller then.  Thanks for your input and help.  I'm going later today to Fry's to grab the Samsung drives.  I've used two (840, 840 Pro) in builds for friends and they work very well. 

 

 

In the future if everything goes well, I would like to RAID0 6 to 8 SSDs and then I'll need a controller.  But that's not for at least a few months if at all. 

 

Hah :p 6 to 8 SSD's? Why? I mean, performance doesn't exactly increase linearly. Far from it. With every drive your access time drops a little too, and SSD's stop being the bottleneck in things very fast. RAID0 with two drives is a good way to get pas the SATA limit right now, but beyond that there's little gain. Load times for a RAID0 with 4 SSDs would probably not be faster than those on 2 SSDs.

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Ambroos says smart things.. RAID 0 really only benefits from 2 to 3 drives at the most.. 2 are the best. The speed doesn't double as you add more drives.

 

MX100 is a good performing drive but I prefer EVOs because they are more reliable. I had Crucial drives before and I wasn't really too happy. Samsung so far has made top notch SSDs without a hitch.

 

Here's another shocker for you.. my score above is on OSX!!!! With software RAID 0.  Going with hardware controller you have onboard is going to be far better.

 

I made a Hackintosh because I work with a lot of OSX software, but if you are on Windows on-board is a way to go.

 

The next step that's better is to buy a dedicated hardware RAID card that goes into PCIe slot. It might perform better but these days the onboard controllers are so good that I am hesitant to recommend buying a dedicated card.

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well, i don't know those drives but their are LSI Sandforce and non deluxe so i would stay away from them.

 

there is also another thing you should know: performance wise RAID 0 is incredible, this 2009 video from Samsung just show it...

Edited by Praetor
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Here's another shocker for you.. my score above is on OSX!!!! With software RAID 0.  Going with hardware controller you have onboard is going to be far better.

 

Intel's mainboard RAID is actually firmware-level and also runs on the CPU. The performance difference with OS-level RAID is small. Because all sorts of RAIDs are quite fast nowadays anyway.

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Would there be any advantage to setting up RAID with an 830 and 840 EVO, the evo is quite a lot faster to begin with. 

 

Would it actually be detrimental to the performance of the 840 evo?

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One small hint, update your BIOS and then Intel Rapid Storage driver. That way if your mainboard is modern enough you might get TRIM back. It's not a great loss however, you might get a few percent performance loss without it. I've never had TRIM in my SSD raid and don't notice any performance degradation.

 

Would there be any advantage to setting up RAID with an 830 and 840 EVO, the evo is quite a lot faster to begin with. 

 

Would it actually be detrimental to the performance of the 840 evo?

 

Two drives in RAID0 will almost always cause double performance. You can go a lot faster because you bypass the SATA3 limit.

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SSD Raid is awesome:

post-129876-0-39349000-1403552350.png

 

It's amusing when the single 840 EVO series is the bottleneck vs 2x 830 series in Raid 0 :D

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