SSD Raid 0 with different drives

[Georgehillier]

Hi guys,

So I currently have a Samsung 840 evo 250GB drive and want to get some more SSD storage, since I do a small amount of editing and I benefit from the faster speeds. I wanted to Raid 0 two of the drives together but they've now discontinued the 840 evo and I can only get the 850 evo (unless I pay more money for the older drive, which doesn't really make sense to me).
I was wondering if it will work fine since they're the same capacity and roughly the same speed? Or will it be less reliable than using two of the 840 evos?

Thanks, George.

 

[USAFRet]

For most uses, 2 x SSD + RAID 0 is no faster than just 2 x SSD
Read this before you go down that road: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

Any particular reason you are looking at RAID 0 with those?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Technically, you can, but Samsung does not recommend using their SSDs in RAID configurations.

 

[Georgehillier]

For my C drive just to be larger by convenience and when editing I imagine it get faster speeds?

 

[USAFRet]

For my C drive just to be larger by convenience and when editing I imagine it get faster speeds?

No, you will not see any speed benefit for that use.

Just have them as two individual drives.
1 for the OS and applications, another for a target drive to render to.

Just for convenience...a single drive letter...is pretty useless. You can setup whatever application you use to use the D or E drive as its default saving location.

But if you really, really want to, go for it.
Just be sure you have a good, tested, backup.

 

[Georgehillier]

For my C drive just to be larger by convenience and when editing I imagine it get faster speeds?

No, you will not see any speed benefit for that use.

Just have them as two individual drives.
1 for the OS and applications, another for a target drive to render to.

Just for convenience...a single drive letter...is pretty useless. You can setup whatever application you use to use the D or E drive as its default saving location.

But if you really, really want to, go for it.
Just be sure you have a good, tested, backup.

Fair enough about the speed part I guess, but half of it would be for the convenience. I tend to have around 100GB of videos on the SSD for editing, so the rest would be used for games etc, which i'd prefer on a single drive than two seperate SSDs.

I was more concerned with the reliability of using two different drives compared to two of the same I guess

 

[USAFRet]

No reliability issues that I could see with using those drives.

Again, though...I wouldn't. Too many added fail points for no real benefit.
Want more SSD storage? Just get a larger drive. 500GB or 1TB.

I have 4 x SSD's in my main system, no RAID at all.

It's your system though. Go for it if you wish.

 

[Georgehillier]

No reliability issues that I could see with using those drives.

Again, though...I wouldn't. Too many added fail points for no real benefit.
Want more SSD storage? Just get a larger drive. 500GB or 1TB.

I have 4 x SSD's in my main system, no RAID at all.

It's your system though. Go for it if you wish.

I can only afford a 250GB SSD unfortunately, otherwise I would go down the route of just buying a 500GB SSD. If I were to go with a single 500GB SSD what would be a good one at a relatively cheap price that's still good?

 

[USAFRet]

No reliability issues that I could see with using those drives.

Again, though...I wouldn't. Too many added fail points for no real benefit.
Want more SSD storage? Just get a larger drive. 500GB or 1TB.

I have 4 x SSD's in my main system, no RAID at all.

It's your system though. Go for it if you wish.

I can only afford a 250GB SSD unfortunately, otherwise I would go down the route of just buying a 500GB SSD. If I were to go with a single 500GB SSD what would be a good one at a relatively cheap price that's still good?

The 850 EVO in that size is $160 from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE

A few weeks ago, I got a 960GB Sandisk Ultra II for $220.
That is currently $244, and the 480GB is $140.

 

[Georgehillier]

No reliability issues that I could see with using those drives.

Again, though...I wouldn't. Too many added fail points for no real benefit.
Want more SSD storage? Just get a larger drive. 500GB or 1TB.

I have 4 x SSD's in my main system, no RAID at all.

It's your system though. Go for it if you wish.

I can only afford a 250GB SSD unfortunately, otherwise I would go down the route of just buying a 500GB SSD. If I were to go with a single 500GB SSD what would be a good one at a relatively cheap price that's still good?

The 850 EVO in that size is $160 from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE

A few weeks ago, I got a 960GB Sandisk Ultra II for $220.
That is currently $244, and the 480GB is $140.

I'm in the UK unfortunately

 

[USAFRet]

No reliability issues that I could see with using those drives.

Again, though...I wouldn't. Too many added fail points for no real benefit.
Want more SSD storage? Just get a larger drive. 500GB or 1TB.

I have 4 x SSD's in my main system, no RAID at all.

It's your system though. Go for it if you wish.

I can only afford a 250GB SSD unfortunately, otherwise I would go down the route of just buying a 500GB SSD. If I were to go with a single 500GB SSD what would be a good one at a relatively cheap price that's still good?

The 850 EVO in that size is $160 from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE

A few weeks ago, I got a 960GB Sandisk Ultra II for $220.
That is currently $244, and the 480GB is $140.

I'm in the UK unfortunately

At amazon.co.uk, the 850 EVO 500GB is almost exactly the same price as US, once you do the currency conversion.
US = $159.99
UK = £111.49 = $163

$4 difference.

 

[Darkbreeze]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£104.98 @ Dabs)
Total: £104.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-04 05:58 GMT+0000


You'll still want to have another SSD or HDD to backup those files though. If you have a single large drive, for the OS and all those files, and something happens to the drive, and you don't have them backed up somewhere, poof, no more files and no OS image/backup. You can use your current SSD for backup but getting a cheap 1TB HDD makes a lot more sense for a backup drive.

 

[Georgehillier]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£104.98 @ Dabs)
Total: £104.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-04 05:58 GMT+0000


You'll still want to have another SSD or HDD to backup those files though. If you have a single large drive, for the OS and all those files, and something happens to the drive, and you don't have them backed up somewhere, poof, no more files and no OS image/backup. You can use your current SSD for backup but getting a cheap 1TB HDD makes a lot more sense for a backup drive.

Yeah, I have a spare 500gb drive I could use for backup. But to be honest I don't have anything irreplaceable on my pc, I tend to do a fresh install once a year anyway

 

[Georgehillier]

I think i've decided to go with another 250gb ssd, but not sure if i'll raid it or not.

Does anyone know if this one is any good http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00S9Q9VS4?keywords=250gb%20ssd&qid=1451907223&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3

And if so would it raid okay with my 840 evo? Or would I be best off getting another 850 evo to raid?

Thanks, George

 

[Darkbreeze]

The SSD Plus is ok-ish, probably on par with Samsung's lower end SSD models or maybe the Kingston SSDnow V300 series. Their Ultra II models are a bit better and a bit faster.

Again, it will probably work, but as I said, Samsung specifically recommends not using their SSDs in RAID configurations, I'm sure that counts doubly for using them thusly with other brands of drives. They not even play nice together at all.

RAID can be very finicky regardless what type of RAID configuration it is. As mentioned by USAFRet, the performance gains over simply using an SSD in a standard configuration are minimal anyway and probably not worth the additional headache. RAID arrays were meant for use with slower mechanic disk drives that saw reasonable performance increases, or for server configurations, not really as a consumer platform for the home user and not for use with SSDs, despite the fact that it does still work when used with them.

 

[CountMike]

For pure storage you can combine multiple disks into one virtual disk.
http://www.howtogeek.com/109380/how-to-use-windows-8s-storage-spaces-to-mirror-combine-drives/