Should I go with a 1tb ssd as my only storage device?

[Mendozer03]

I was going to buy a 256gb ssd and 2 tb hdd but after some thought, I was strongly considering just going with a 1tb ssd for now and eventually buying another one and running them in raid 0.

 

[USAFRet]

1. SSD + RAID 0 is pointless.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

2. A 250 or 500GB SSD is fine. Pair that with a large HDD for other stuff, and you're golden.
OS and applications on the SSD, other stuff on the HDD.

 

[ss202sl]

Don't put them in raid. They are fast enough on their own, and putting them in raid just adds risk to your data. SSD is fine for your only drive - just make sure you have a backup of your needed data. If you add a drive later, just make it an additional drive(D drive).

 

[Pikker]

SSDs aren't as reliable for long-term storage as HDDs, a recent study shows that SSDs may lose data when powered off for long periods of time, however much solid state storage you have, you need at least as much in magnetic for backups.

You can't simply add another SSD and expect it to run in RAID without wiping the data on the other drive first, so you will need magnetic storage anyway during that process. Not that I really recommend using RAID0 ever, but that's just me, if you absolutely need 1000MB/s+ reads for heavy work get an Intel 750 instead, it's still not worth the risk factor to RAID.

 

[nukemaster]

Yeah, what they say.

Backup is essential for ANY computer.

The reason RAID0 does not add as much to SSD's is that RAID0 does not improve access times and access times are what make SSD's so fast. With no head having to move from place to place ssd's do not have these slow access times that hard drives have. RAID0 was good to allow multiple hard drives(or SSDs) to have fast sequential read/write ability(useful for lets say recording no/low compression video), but SSD are already pretty quick in this department too.

Random reads and writes are MUCH more common in day to day computer use for most users and SSDs are very good at this type of work load(again because they can get from place to place in less than 1ms in most cases while a hard drive takes much longer).

My old hard drive raid0 setups. Sure they have fast transfers(ignore the burst it is nor sustainable in any way). The red one was short stroked for less drop in speed and faster access at a cost of lots of space.

Note the slow access times.