SSD Combination Query :)

[Madbaron]

Heres my problem

OCZ Revodrive x2 240gb as my OS drive.

Now for storage i was thinking of getting a normal HDD like a "Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB" However i was wondering if there was much difference between that and a Momentus XT from seagate. It offers a 4gb SSD buffer of sorts to transfer information from my Revodrive to my storage and its no good having a really fast OS drive and having slow storage copy and write speeds.

Another problem is because of the Revodrive's onboard Raid 0 i'm not sure if that will effect the small SSD in the Momentus XT to not allow trim or Garbage collection (Still having worked out which it uses if any)

So, your thoughts

 

[Sihastru]

The MLC cache in the XT is not visible to the OS or the SATA driver so no TRIM support there. The cache is managed internally by the drive (firmware + chipset). The way it works is it's always snooping around in the background and looks at the most accessed data on your XT, and keeps a copy of that info in the MLC cache for fast access.

If you would start copying let's say a larger file, 1-4GB, it will not be cached. So the speed will be that of a 2.5" laptop HDD, meaning VERY slow. As a storage drive the XT is useless. There is no OS on it so there are no really small files to cache. The nature of a storage drive is that data on it is either stored and seldom accessed or the files are temporary stored, used at some point once or twice and then deleted. So they won't have the chance of being cached.

So go ahead and get yourself the 2TB WD, it can even be a green drive... or, for the money you put up for a Black drive you can get two Green ones and used them in RAID1.

 

[sheroo]

Have you already got the RevoDrive?

 

[Madbaron]

Thanks for the response, i did figure thats what was going on down the track with the XT. Its a pitty the SSD part doesnt function like a normal drive as a cache, but never the less il have to settle with a normal drive.

Have you already got the RevoDrive?

I do yes, just working out a good combination before i put everything together. Still waiting on my motherboard and memory

 

[sheroo]

Have you looked at the SilverStone HDDBoost stuff? Don't know how good it is, as I've never used it. Probably similar to the Momentus?

 

[Madbaron]

Yea the Silverstone HDDBoost works pretty much the same way as a XT only that its actually using a SDD and the chip on it determines if it should write to the HDD or the SSD, Again not really what i was after for storage speeds as i'm still going to need to buy a number of SSD's for it work and even then its not guaranteed that the speeds from this drive will act at speeds of a SSD.

The revodrive will be my OS, il just have to put up with transferring large files that i'm working on to a storage device, which i beleive is round at max 100mb/s

 

[S_I_N]

if its just for storage dont worry about ssd like addition to it. As it wont make a whole lot of difference for storage the performance of a storage drive is a mute point I run 2 ssd's in raid and 4 hdd's in another raid for storage and my stuff on the storage drives load up rather quickly. I think you might be over-thiniking it a tad

just get the 2TB WD Black and you'll be fine. I ahve used the XT's both singulary and in a raid and they offer no real world performance bonus outside of randomly accessed files from a BOOT drive not storage. No help on storage that I was able to measure.

 

[Madbaron]

Thanks for that, just a thought i had

 

[mayhem]

for my storage drive i used 2 x 1.5 TB in raid o. It moves the files across relay quickly.

 

[Madbaron]

That was my next option, but having 2 drives in raid 0 they do combine space? 2Tb x 2 = 4Tb?

 

[sheroo]

That was my next option, but having 2 drives in raid 0 they do combine space? 2Tb x 2 = 4Tb?

Yes the disks are stripped. But if one disk dies you loose all the info on both.