SATA 6.0 vs. 10000 RPM

[phasmantis]

So I'm planning on buying two new harddrives, and I'm just wondering if two sata 6.0gb/s harddrives in RAID 0 would be faster than two 10000 RPM Sata 3.0gb/s harddrives.

I'm thinking the 10000 RPM harddrives will be faster, but I can't be certain.

Thanks in advance.

 

[505090]

depending on models 10 k drives are likely your better option, there are currently no drives that can saturate a sata2 connection let alone sata3

 

[sminlal]

Faster in what sense?

The RAID 0 setup will probably have a faster transfer rate, but the 10000RPM drives will have a faster access time.

Transfer rates are more important if you do a lot of copying of large files.

Access times are more important to speed up tasks like booting and starting applications.

Note that the difference between SATA 3.0Gbit/sec and 6.0Gbit/sec is completely irrelevant for consumer hard drives because none of them spin fast enough for the sustained transfer rate to exceed more than about 1.5Gbit/sec anyway.

Even most SSDs don't exceed 3.0Gbit/sec speeds - there are only a few of the very high-end ones that really require a 6.0Gbit/sec connection for full performance.

 

[phasmantis]

Well it'd be used for gaming, so I'm going to assume faster access time will be more important. =)

 

[sminlal]

Then the 10RPM drives will give you a bit better performance.

But frankly, if you're willing to pay for two 10KRPM drives then you should really think about using a single SSD instead. For a similar or lower price you'll get much, much better performance. The only issue might be how much stuff you need to put on it.

 

[phasmantis]

Okay, so I don't know much about SSD. Can you run them in RAID 0? Should you? Do you even need to? Also, what's the difference between a 10RPM drive and an SSD?

EDIT: After doing a little research it appears you can run them in RAID, but it's "overkill." I am also seeing things about "TRIM" issues but I am not sure how that works.

One thing I am worried about with SSDs is that they will die quickly or slow down over time, as I caught a glimpse of that during research. Is that true? If so, what's the expected lifetime of an SSD drive and how long would one expect to see slowdowns if they even occur.

Seems like they need some TLC too, like no defrag, search indexing, etc. If you could hit on these points I'd appreciate it. I know you're not supposed to defrag flashdrives either, so are they similiar in the way they're made?

 

[505090]

a ssd in raid is overkill for most applications, and I have only seen one raid controller to date that can support trim, and it was rather expensive

trim is a feature that comes with only win7 and prevents the degradation of the drive so that performance will remain consistent over the life of the drive

the drive will not die but performance will be significantly compromised over time without trim. of course you could always format and start over fresh, but you will end up i the same place again in time require yet another format

yes flash drives and ssd are essentially the same thing unless you wanna get real technical. if you are running win7 all you have to do is install it and leave it alone windows will take care of it for you

 

[phasmantis]

Ah, so with Windows 7 and a single SSD drive I essentially have nothing to worry about unless I ran two in RAID 0, then I would need a raid controller that supports trim as well?

 

[sminlal]

The rule of thumb with SSDs is to avoid RAID and use Windows 7 - if you do that then you're pretty much set and have nothing to worry about. SSDs are so fast that RAID really isn't required.

SSDs do wear out with a lot of writing, but for most users you can expect them to last for 5 years or more without any worries. Intel states that their drives will last "at least" 5 years even if you write 20GB to them every day. On my Windows 7 system I'm averaging about 5GB per day of writes to the drive.

If you're particularly concerned about the drive wearing out then buy one larger than you need and partition the drive so as to leave 20-30% or more space unused - that unused space will help the drive to better manage it's wear leveling.

 

[phasmantis]

5 years is good enough for me for a gaming computer. Probably will only reach 20GB writing on the day of installation 😛. Thanks a ton guys.


One more question. Will I have to manually turn off search indexing and defragmentation? Or will Windows 7 automatically do that for me?

 

[505090]

just install and leave it alone

 

[phasmantis]

Best answer selected by phasmantis.