SSD's - Drive vs Card

[cigarjohn]

I want to build a new system and use an Asus Rampage III Extreme motherboard. Unfortunately, the motherboard only offers two SATA III ports and 6 SATA II ports. Now I was going to purchase two Western Digital Velocity Raptors 600 gb/SATA III Drives and use the two SATA III ports.

Now; my question is, since I only have two SATA III ports, if I purchase a SATA II SSD drive, will there be much noticeable difference in performance between a SATA III drive?

Also, I was thinkng of purchasing a OCZ RevoDrive. Will this drive work as a SATA III drive in my PCIE slot?

I just need a boot up drive only. All my other software will be installed on my two 600 gb drives set in a RAID 0 configuration.


Thanks for your advice.

Peace.

 

[sabysmth]

eSATA is compatible with both USB and eSATA devices. However, it cannot be connected to both at the same time. The connection does not require installation of new software as this is a default service in all the computers.

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[cigarjohn]

eSATA is compatible with both USB and eSATA devices. However, it cannot be connected to both at the same time. The connection does not require installation of new software as this is a default service in all the computers.

Wholesale Computer Peripherals

O.K. thanks for getting back to me. But your explanation still is kind of confusing to me and doesn't really answer my question fully.

I just want to know if when I use both of the SATA III ports on my mobo, if I install an SSD PCIE card on my mobo, will it work as another SATA III drive or does the chip set only allow for two drives to work under the SATA III ports.

Also, will there be much of a difference of a performance hit if I were to use a SATA II SSD over a SATA III drive.

 

[ssddx]

ignore what sabysmth wrote, they are advertising their website (which probably isn't even legit) on this forum and should be getting dealt with once a moderator notices.

as to your question:

the only drives i've heard about that can fully max out sata2 (and take advantage of sata3) are some high end SSD drives that at the moment are rather pricey. sata 2 should be fine for all but the highest read drives available which i don't think you'd want since the price is insane. 10k raptors were around long before sata3 was so sata2 is fine. keep in mind that if you plug a sata 2 device into a sata3 port it will revert to sata2 speeds.

a ssd card (like the one ocz makes) uses the pci interface and not the sata bus. they claim that higher r/w speeds can be achieved but the price is not very consumer friendly at all so I do not suggest this option.

if the device you connect can not tap out sata2 then you will not notice a gain with sata3. there are a few articles on toms about this so you might want to read up.

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also, keep in mind that with a raid 0 setup unless you plan on backing up your information at regular intervals you are at a very high risk of losing all that data. raid 0 offers absolutely zero protection since if you lose one drive you lose everything. the same is true with a single drive, if it dies everything is lost.

i have your same motherboard and i just installed raid 1 ocz vertex 2 ssds (sata2) for my boot drive (after having much trouble with wd black 1.5tb drives) and normal ssd performance is perfectly fine. raid 1 doesnt offer anything in terms of speed but if a hard drive fails it is a godsend.

raid 1+0/raid10 (4drives) or raid 5(3drives min) are setups that give a speed increase and give data protection at the expense of more money spent on drives.

 

[cigarjohn]

ignore what sabysmth wrote, they are advertising their website (which probably isn't even legit) on this forum and should be getting dealt with once a moderator notices.

as to your question:

the only drives i've heard about that can fully max out sata2 (and take advantage of sata3) are some high end SSD drives that at the moment are rather pricey. sata 2 should be fine for all but the highest read drives available which i don't think you'd want since the price is insane. 10k raptors were around long before sata3 was so sata2 is fine. keep in mind that if you plug a sata 2 device into a sata3 port it will revert to sata2 speeds.

a ssd card (like the one ocz makes) uses the pci interface and not the sata bus. they claim that higher r/w speeds can be achieved but the price is not very consumer friendly at all so I do not suggest this option.

if the device you connect can not tap out sata2 then you will not notice a gain with sata3. there are a few articles on toms about this so you might want to read up.

---

also, keep in mind that with a raid 0 setup unless you plan on backing up your information at regular intervals you are at a very high risk of losing all that data. raid 0 offers absolutely zero protection since if you lose one drive you lose everything. the same is true with a single drive, if it dies everything is lost.

i have your same motherboard and i just installed raid 1 ocz vertex 2 ssds (sata2) for my boot drive (after having much trouble with wd black 1.5tb drives) and normal ssd performance is perfectly fine. raid 1 doesnt offer anything in terms of speed but if a hard drive fails it is a godsend.

raid 1+0/raid10 (4drives) or raid 5(3drives min) are setups that give a speed increase and give data protection at the expense of more money spent on drives.

Thank you for your reply. It has helped me out a lot. I do daily back-ups of my files internally and weekly back-ups of my back-up drive externally.

I will be using two VelociRaptors 10k 600 gb in a raid 0 config for all my games and productivity programs and they will be on the two SATA 3 ports. And I will be using one 90 gb SSD on a SATA 2 port for my boot drive and utilities.

I was going to use two smaller ssd's in a raid 0 config for boot up and might put one of my favorite games on it and the rest on the two 600's. But don't know how to set up the computer to make the two ssd's go into an idle mode when I'm not at my computer to do garbage collecting. So I'll just go with the original configuration that I mentioned previously.


Thanks once again for your help in this matter and for steering me in the right direction. People like you with your knowledge and honesty is what makes computer users like me more at ease without encountering the wrong mistakes that would discourage us from every building computers on our own.

Peace and I wish you a good new year.