SSD720 Vs Raid0

[milianoart]

Hi All

I have a asus rampage extreme II mb, with Raid0 2 x 500GB sata II drives 7200RPM

I want to replace them with 2 x SSD720 but they will run individually, one for windows 7 64bit the other for games.

My Question:

1. Will the SSD be considerablely faster?
2. Will my mb support SSD720 drive and speed?

All i found on the motherboard storage specs was : Intel ICH10R controller 6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports Intel Matrix Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10 JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller 1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66/33 for up to 2 PATA devices 1 xExternal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go) 1 xSATA 3.0 Gb/s port

Thank You~

 

[mikeangs2004]

Your mobo can only support up to SATA II, not SATA III, so no, it will not support up to full speed with your old mobo. Even if it does support it, you will not notice a faster speed for most of your tasks if you RAID them in general, also especially considering larger capacity SSD's are generally faster than smaller one's for larger SSD's up to 256GB. Also TRIM does not support RAID so the chances of your SSD's failing increases. Also a 128GB SSD is usually cheaper than 2X 64GB, so if I were you I would buy one 128GB SSD.

 

[sewalk]

There are still plenty of SSDs on the market with SATA-II (3Gb/s) interfaces. They will usually come pretty close to saturating the interface (250-300MB/s) as will a SATA-III (6GB/s) SSD. Since SATA-III drives are fully backward compatible with the SATA-II interface, this shouldn't really be a consideration for your purchase; either will work great. For best results, though, you can purchase a simple SATA-III controller to maximize the performance of a SATA-III SSD without breaking the bank. Hardware RAID support is usually overkill for anything less than a RAID0+1 or RAID5 setup (i.e. 4 or more drives)

Raw sequential throughput is only one of the benefits of a SSD; while SSDs are usually 3-4 times faster (or more) than HDDs in sequential transfers, they really outpace them when it comes to random throughput, usually by a factor of 20 or more. This is where much of your perceived improvements will come from.

Using SSDs in RAID is just about always a bad idea. The loss of TRIM support will significantly shorten the life of the drives, for starters. The return on performance is usually just not worth that cost for most end users. Using a pair of SSDs as two seperate drives is smarter but in most cases, using a SSD and a HDD in tandem, one for OS and apps and one for large-scale storage offers the best of both speed and space.

I'd recommend a single 120-250GB SSD and a pair of 1+TB HDD in a RAID1 configuration for the best combination of speed, space, and security for most budgets. For non-enterprise installations, multiple SSDs offer little benefit for a lot of cost.

 

[adampower]

Answer 1: Yes the SSD will be considerably faster! Buy 1 for your OS and save the rest for Ivy Bridge and PCIe 3.0

Answer 2: As they say you're mobo's theoretical ability to abuse something like a monster 720 is not there. However, I'm sure I can't see the difference between super fast and a little bit super fasterer. Both will eat up your RAID 0 and spit it out... except for big sequential moves maybe.