2x SSD EVO 120GB Raid 0 or 1x SSD EVO 250GB For Gaming?

[akzon]

Hello,

I am trying to decide between buying the SSD mentioned above and would like some help making my decision. I Heard that Raid 0 improve speed of drives by a lot, so I would like to know if its good for gaming. In a website I saw the info that gaming trace is 6% write and 94% read, meaning that basically only reading is important. My questions are the following.

1. Does Raid 0 reading speeds in SSD are substantial?

2. What type of reading is done in gaming sequential or random?

3. I heard that Raid 0 only increases sequential speeds so if gaming is all about random reading speeds then Raid 0 wouldn't be beneficial for me .

4. If Raid 0 is beneficial for gaming, what are the risk and how to prevent them?

Ric
Thanks in advance!

 

[kanewolf]

The risk is a higher probability of failure. You have additional levels of hardware or software to create the RAID volume which adds complexity. If it works you will be happy. If it doesn't the amount of work required to get it to work is much higher. Compared to a mechanical hard drive a single SSD will provide all the performance needed. If you REALLY want maximum performance then you should look at a PCIe SSD or a direct PCI M2 SSD. Both of these break the SATA bottleneck.

 

[cst1992]

SSD Raid is for pure nerds.
Earthlings like us don't need it.

 

[kanewolf]

SSD Raid is for pure nerds.
Earthlings like us don't need it.

And (in my opinion) real RAID is only done in hardware.

 

[cst1992]

What do you mean?

 

[kanewolf]

What do you mean?

I mean, the RAID implementations that use Windows striped volumes or a device driver with standard SATA ports aren't an implementation that I am comfortable recommending. If you are determined to do RAID spend the $100 to get a hardware RAID card that handles the heavy lifting.

 

[cst1992]

Didn't even know such a thing as a RAID card existed. Thanks for the info.

 

[kanewolf]

Didn't even know such a thing as a RAID card existed. Thanks for the info.

Here are a few examples ...

 

[mad-max79]

Just get a single SSD, makes no trouble when backing up stuff. Also TRIM just works. You also won't feel any performance benefit.