RAID0 F3 1TB or SSD Need advice

[kureme]

Built a PC a few months back with a single F3 1TB drive. I was waiting for a good deal on SSDs but didn't find any good ones this past holiday season. I am considering getting a second F3 for a RAID0 set up which will be around $60 or a 100GB+ SSD which will be $170+. Perhaps I should just keep waiting? I was thinking just go with the raid0 set up as main drive now and later when a good SSD deal comes around change it to a raid1/no raid storage/backup drive.

Money is not really an issue but bang for the buck is. I don't want to buy something today only to have it drop value a week later. All the parts I have now still have the same value or are actually higher than when I got them 4 months ago.

The 60GB GSkill for $60 deal a while back that I missed kinda ruined it for me. Any deal not $1 per GB is not good enough. http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/41095

So yeah.. I need advice.

 

[geofelt]

Raid-0 will give you no perceptible performance benefit for the OS and apps.

Any SSD with trim(and windows-7) will make you happy.

The better SSD's will have sandforce controllers today.
Intel is also good, but a bit dated. They should launch gen3 ssd's this quarter. I expect the price/gb to come down a bit then.
If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.


But, since you already have a 1tb drive, I suggest a 128gb SSD for the OS and apps. Would 64gb do? Put storage and backups on the 1tb drive.

 

[kureme]

I was considering the RAID0 set up because I've read that two F3s can achieve average reads of over 200 mb/s. Even faster if they're short stroked which I may do since I don't really need all 2TB just yet.

I'm not waiting for the next best thing. I pretty much know what I want to get and now just waiting for the right price. Like I said before, that $1/gb sandforce SSD deal I missed makes all deals above that price ratio a rip off to me.

With that in mind, the next best thing to me is raiding two F3s until a good SSD deal comes along. Now my question is is that a smart thing to do as a temporary solution? Or should I just not waste the $60 and put that towards a "ripoff" SSD?

 

[geofelt]

I was considering the RAID0 set up because I've read that two F3s can achieve average reads of over 200 mb/s. Even faster if they're short stroked which I may do since I don't really need all 2TB just yet.

I'm not waiting for the next best thing. I pretty much know what I want to get and now just waiting for the right price. Like I said before, that $1/gb sandforce SSD deal I missed makes all deals above that price ratio a rip off to me.

With that in mind, the next best thing to me is raiding two F3s until a good SSD deal comes along. Now my question is is that a smart thing to do as a temporary solution? Or should I just not waste the $60 and put that towards a "ripoff" SSD?

Typical user activity is 90% short reads and writes, a task that any ssd does very well, and about 10x faster than the raided 1tb drives. It also does sequential reads comparable or faster. A no brainer if you value performance. Your selection of size is probably the most difficult choice.
Larger ssd's are usually faster, but not enough so to warrant getting a larger one than you need. The OS will take about 13gb. Look for Intel, or a sandforce based SSD for best performance.

 

[kureme]

Well I'm eventually getting a SSD but just waiting for the right price or something decent thats close to $1/gb. Hopefully the 3rd gen SSDs will push older SSDs down closer to that ratio.

I'll take it you're opposed to the raid0 idea but I can always change it to a raid1 or a no raid set up for double storage when the SSD deal comes along. Maybe I should just tough it out and wait a few more seconds loading time until then.

 

[saint19]

If you want something good now, get a Crucial C300 64GB are enough for OS and applications, but you can go higher if you want.

 

[geofelt]

Well I'm eventually getting a SSD but just waiting for the right price or something decent thats close to $1/gb. Hopefully the 3rd gen SSDs will push older SSDs down closer to that ratio.

I'll take it you're opposed to the raid0 idea but I can always change it to a raid1 or a no raid set up for double storage when the SSD deal comes along. Maybe I should just tough it out and wait a few more seconds loading time until then.

Yup; no raid for me.

I tried raid-0 several years ago with two raptors; It made no apparent diference, but the benches looked good. Raid-0 can help with large sequential file processing, but not much else.

raid-1 protects you from hard drive failure, but not from other more common file destruction such as viruses, or operator error. You will do better using external drives for backup.

 

[mavroxur]

Raid-0 will give you no perceptible performance benefit for the OS and apps.

Do you even know how a RAID 0 operates? It would give a considerable performance increase over a single drive.

 

[geofelt]

Do you even know how a RAID 0 operates? It would give a considerable performance increase over a single drive.

Absolutely, do you? If you are asking for an explanation:

Alternating stripes( of a user selected size, 32k, 256k, whatever) are written to each member drive of the raid-0 array.

When a read needs to be done, the first stripe is read to satisfy the request.
In the event that more than one stripe is needed, a second read is initiated to access a stripe on the second drive concurrently. That concurrency is where the benefit comes, the concurrent read.

In a hard drive, you need positioning time( seek, search, rotational delay) in addition to the transfer time .
A SSD fares better in raid-0 because of the minimal positioning time. For what it is worth, I also tried two Intel X25-M 80gb drives in raid-0. My objective was a larger system image, not performance. They felt no faster than the single X25-M 160gb drive which replaced them.

Remember, benchmarks, particularly synthetic ones bear little resemblance to what YOUR usage pattern is.
For the typical user, the OS does 90% small(4-8k) reads and writes. That is why there are very few concurrent read opportunities.
Better than nothing though.

 

[kureme]

Best answer selected by kureme.

 

[saint19]

This topic has been closed by Saint19