News This Award-Winning 1TB SSD Is Only $83

[Admin]

We gave this SK Hynix 1TB SSD high marks in our review this year, and now it's on sale.

This Award-Winning 1TB SSD Is Only $83 : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The only downside is it isn't 2TB for $160. With games using higher resolution and more complex assets, with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 being a prime example of 200GB of space required, but with 40GB+ being increasingly common, and especially with the RTX 3070, and presumably AMD's version as well, making 4k60 accessible at the mainstream level, there is an ever increasing market for 2TB and higher SATA SSDs...

 

[Giroro]

The only downside is it isn't 2TB for $160. With games using higher resolution and more complex assets, with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 being a prime example of 200GB of space required, but with 40GB+ being increasingly common, and especially with the RTX 3070, and presumably AMD's version as well, making 4k60 accessible at the mainstream level, there is an ever increasing market for 2TB and higher SATA SSDs...

You can always do a RAID 0 array of 1TB drives, which will also perform better than an interface-limited 2TB drive.

 

[USAFRet]

You can always do a RAID 0 array of 1TB drives, which will also perform better than an interface-limited 2TB drive.

RAID 0 + SSD is rarely a good idea. There are only a very few use cases where it might make a difference. A gaming PC is not one of them.

 

[styymy]

We gave this SK Hynix 1TB SSD high marks in our review this year, and now it's on sale.

This Award-Winning 1TB SSD Is Only $83 : Read more

Already back up to $99. Only took a few hours.

 

[derekullo]

RAID 0 + SSD is rarely a good idea. There are only a very few use cases where it might make a difference. A gaming PC is not one of them.

Raid 0 on a gaming PC doesn't sound that bad.

There's no point backing up Steam since you can always re-download it.

The increase in speed over a single SSD may not be that noticeable for gaming but having an array twice as large as before lets you fit twice as many games.

 

[USAFRet]

Raid 0 on a gaming PC doesn't sound that bad.

There's no point backing up Steam since you can always re-download it.

The increase in speed over a single SSD may not be that noticeable for gaming but having an array twice as large as before lets you fit twice as many games.

1TB + 1TB + RAID 0 = 2TB
1TB + 1TB = 2TB

Steam trivially allows libraries on multiple drives or partitions.
No need for the complexity and fragility of the RAID 0.

 

[derekullo]

1TB + 1TB + RAID 0 = 2TB
1TB + 1TB = 2TB

Steam trivially allows libraries on multiple drives or partitions.
No need for the complexity and fragility of the RAID 0.

Complexity of Raid 0
To me only having 1 partition with all of my games is easier to manage and less complex than deciding if I should install my game on D: with 600 gigabytes free or E: with 500 gigabytes free.

Fragility of Raid 0
If you only have 1 drive and it fails you lose everything.

If you have a raid 0 and 1 drive fails you also lose everything.

The chance of a drive dying with 2 drives is indeed higher than a single drive, but the "everything" in this case is easily replaceable data you can re-download from Steam.

My sample size may not be as large as Backblaze, but with the 600 or so computers with SSDs that we have purchased in the last 3 years I have yet to see an SSD fail versus the 1-2 a month hard drives that fail.

In conclusion, the increased quality of life due to the reduction of complexity outweighs the negligible increase in fragility of the easily replaceable data.

 

[USAFRet]

You can promote the RAID 0 all you want.
For this purpose, I'll not agree. Especially without dedicated RAID hardware controller.


Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

To move an already installed game
Games library
Right click the game
Properties
Local Files
Move Install Folder

 

[derekullo]

You can promote the RAID 0 all you want.
For this purpose, I'll not agree. Especially without dedicated RAID hardware controller.


Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

To move an already installed game
Games library
Right click the game
Properties
Local Files
Move Install Folder

A dedicated raid controller for a gaming computer sounds like overkill if all you are doing is storing games.

I can't think of another scenario when I would use raid 0 other than this one here.

If not this one than for what purpose would you use a raid 0 ?

Edit: I'm sorry if this brings up a scarring raid 0 failure from the past.

 

[USAFRet]

A dedicated raid controller for a gaming computer sounds like overkill if all you are doing is storing games.

I can't think of another scenario when I would use raid 0 other than this one here.

If not this one than for what purpose would you use a raid 0 ?

I have a 3x 8TB RAID 0 in my QNAP NAS box.
Dedicated RAID controller, solid software.
Simply to present a single 24TB volume. And also, mostly as an experiment. Just to play with it.

This is fully backed up and easily recoverable at all times, to other storage.

For a game box, with Steam easily configurable for multiple drives? Not a chance.

For your "easily downloadable again" ? Not everyone has great bandwidth.

 

[cfbcfb]

A dedicated raid controller for a gaming computer sounds like overkill if all you are doing is storing games.

I can't think of another scenario when I would use raid 0 other than this one here.

If not this one than for what purpose would you use a raid 0 ?

Edit: I'm sorry if this brings up a scarring raid 0 failure from the past.

Yep, don't know what he's talking about. Most MB's will do raid 0 on at least two sata ports and using Windows Spaces doesn't bring much of a performance hit, you get nearly double read/write speeds. I've used SSD's in raid 0 and raid 1 and the speed blew my pants off.

Anyone see my pants anywhere?

Downside on raid 0 + SSD is a failure. Since you're splitting writes over two drives, you may actually reduce drive lifespan and with the exception of the evil OCZ SSD's that died in droves years ago, every SSD I ever bought from a Kingston 64GB to an hynix p31 gold is still working fine, after lots of usage.

My home server has 4 x 2tb drives in Parity setting under windows spaces. I have a huge stack of older, smaller HDD's I wanted to burn through. Many are old drives, one is only sata2. On crystaldiskmark I'm seeing read and write speeds between what any of the HDD's can do on their own and a decent sata SSD. About 400MB/s read rates. All "green" 5400rpm drives!

 

[USAFRet]

"nearly double read/write speeds "
Is this in benchmarks, or actual user facing performance?

HDD + RAID 0? Yes, you DO see a huge speed increase. Still well below that of a SATA III SSD, but much better than a single spinning drive.

Storage Spaces? Not a chance. You couldn't pay me to run that.

 

[derekullo]

Yep, don't know what he's talking about. Most MB's will do raid 0 on at least two sata ports and using Windows Spaces doesn't bring much of a performance hit, you get nearly double read/write speeds. I've used SSD's in raid 0 and raid 1 and the speed blew my pants off.

Anyone see my pants anywhere?

Downside on raid 0 + SSD is a failure. Since you're splitting writes over two drives, you may actually reduce drive lifespan and with the exception of the evil OCZ SSD's that died in droves years ago, every SSD I ever bought from a Kingston 64GB to an hynix p31 gold is still working fine, after lots of usage.

My home server has 4 x 2tb drives in Parity setting under windows spaces. I have a huge stack of older, smaller HDD's I wanted to burn through. Many are old drives, one is only sata2. On crystaldiskmark I'm seeing read and write speeds between what any of the HDD's can do on their own and a decent sata SSD. About 400MB/s read rates. All "green" 5400rpm drives!

Wouldn't splitting drive writes increase the drive life span to the combined write endurance of the two?

A 1 gigabyte file would be 512 megabytes of writes on each?

 

[USAFRet]

Wouldn't splitting drive writes increase the drive life span to the combined total of the two?

A 1 gigabyte file would be 512 megabytes of writes on each?

And minus RAID 0, writing 1GB to Drive 1 means 0 writes to Drive 2.
At worst, it evens out.

 

[Giroro]

RAID 0 + SSD is rarely a good idea. There are only a very few use cases where it might make a difference. A gaming PC is not one of them.

I agree its probably not worthwhile to set up RAID 0 on NVMe drives where buying a higher capacity drive already tends to give you a bump in performance with lower power and complexity than a RAID array.

But I'm with @derekullo on this one. The pro of possible increased bandwidth and fewer logical volumes could outweigh the cons of the added effort and technically lower reliability (not that failure is actually very likely or even a big deal with cloud backups). Doubling the number of components increases the chance of data loss from failure, but doubling the amount of DRAM/cache/overprovisioning also means the RAID 0 should be able absorb more writes before wearing out...and 2TB versions of drives often have twice the number of flash chips. Regardless, Hynix doesn't make this drive in 2TB for comparison.
I would be interested to see a statistical analysis of the IRL reliability of SSDs in RAID compared to a larger drive... but I think for your average gamer, these drives are going to go obsolete well before failure.

This is a use case where RAID 0 might make sense to a desktop user, especially if they are already looking for an excuse to set up an array for fun, or just to see

 

[Deleted member 14196]

no, it's not worth it in terms of reliability. adding another failure point does not add to reliablitly in any way, and, you are never going to see any real differences, except slowing down the OS

 

[USAFRet]

Doubling the number of components increases the chance of data loss from failure, but doubling the amount of DRAM/cache/overprovisioning also means the RAID 0 should be able absorb more writes before wearing out...

The individual drives do not care about the DRAM/cache/OP of the other drive.

Each physical drive is its own entity. They don't, and can't, share that OP space.