SSD raid or HDD raid?

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Kstan0318

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May 25, 2016
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Putting together a new build within the next few months, was trying to figure out if I wanted ssd or hdd in raid for mostly just gaming. Or doing something like ssd raid 10 with an extra hdd for everyday use. Or doing a hdd raid 10 for the same purpose. Either way I'll more than likely get another smaller ssd for the OS as a stand alone. I want to know thoughts on either setup or any ideas that may be better options or ideas. Thank you in advance!
 
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Honestly, avoid raid. Now that we have SSDs you don't need to run AID0, and I doubt you need the uptime that RAID1 provides. (Repeat after me, RAID1 is NOT a backup solution.) Here is what I did.

Get a SATA III board. I have my OS sitting on an older SATAII SSD, but it's not that much slower than my newer SSD. I have my Steam folder sitting on my newer 250GB 840pro. I have two 4TB drives for data. Hopefully this black friday I'll get a 1TB SSD for my steam folder and move my 250GB drive down to my OS. So get a good 120-250GB drive for your OS. Get a large SSD for your games, and finally a spinning disk for everything else.

You don't want to AID0 two spinning disks because they avg ~200MB read, and two of them will hit...
Hey there, Kstan0318.

It basically depends on your budget and storage capacity needs. RAID 10 is great on both redundancy and performance, however it's definitely going to be an overkill with SSDs for gaming in my opinion. A RAID 10 with HDDs would be more than enough, especially having in mind that the only role the drive has in terms of gaming is how fast it loads the game and the in-game loading screen. This does have its advantage for games like Skyrim (with tons of in-game loading screens), but there won't be any other noticeable difference in terms of performance (again speaking solely about gaming here).

Basically it all comes down to budget and personal preference. My advice is to think about a backup solution for your important files (such as videos, photos, documents, etc.) as well, because even though RAID 10 provides redundancy, this is not a backup.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD
 
Mouse over the Kitty.
I went with an all SSD machine on this one a year ago. 4,900 + hours so far. It does almost everything instantly.
The responsiveness is what I always wanted in a P.C, no waiting after many years of playing with computers. SSDs are the way to go.
The machine works better than I expected by a large margin. If you can afford all SSDs you will be more than satisfied with the results.
Someone will chime in and argue this though.
Best of.
W.P.
 
Honestly, avoid raid. Now that we have SSDs you don't need to run AID0, and I doubt you need the uptime that RAID1 provides. (Repeat after me, RAID1 is NOT a backup solution.) Here is what I did.

Get a SATA III board. I have my OS sitting on an older SATAII SSD, but it's not that much slower than my newer SSD. I have my Steam folder sitting on my newer 250GB 840pro. I have two 4TB drives for data. Hopefully this black friday I'll get a 1TB SSD for my steam folder and move my 250GB drive down to my OS. So get a good 120-250GB drive for your OS. Get a large SSD for your games, and finally a spinning disk for everything else.

You don't want to AID0 two spinning disks because they avg ~200MB read, and two of them will hit ~400MB, which is slower than a single SSD. My 840pro reads at over 500MBps. And as I said you don't or shouldn't care if your machine is down for a night while you reload the OS on the off chance you lost your drive. For a real backup solution just use a USB drive to backup anything you really need.
 
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https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-VIII-FORMULA/

is the mobo I was planning to go with, new build also looking at the 6700k with a 1080 when they come out as well.
 
Yep that motherboard will take whatever you can throw at it. Although, as others have pointed out, RAID of SSDs is not going to get you any real-world gains or FPS boosts. You'll really only see it copying large files. Better to just get one, or even two SSDs and use one as a boot drive and the other for storage.
 
I was only throw the idea of raid out there, all the points made are bringing what I was thinking to light. Probably will get 1 or 2 ssds with a hdd as well for the other stuff. Boogieman mentioned backups, kinda side topic because this is another idea I had as well. What you're talking about pretty much is a nas box correct? Or just a decently large external hooked up for backups? From what I understand the more drives you have increases your chance of failures. So saying that I'm more than likely not to run raid, would you still recommend a backup system like a nas or just a beefy external? (Guess they are kinda the same?)
 
I mostly agree with starcrusier. Any drive. I mentioned a USB external only because they are cheap. A NAS is ok if you have the $$$ and want to go that route. A spare internal MIGHT be ok, but a real backup isn't connected 24/7. Meaning you'll have to shut down to dis/connect the drive. Otherwise it's another drive that can get wiped out with a lightening strike or encrypted when you get hit with a ransom virus. I bought the HAF XM case which has two hot swap bays and use an old 2TB drive to backup my personal files. You can also hop on amazon/ebay and buy SATA to USB adapters to reuse old drives. It might seem like a lot of money/drives, but an SSD for OS, another for games, and a large HDD for data is the way to go. At least for me.
 
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