To RAID SSD or not to RAID SSD, that is the question!

[jimbojames]

What is everyones thoughts on RAIDing 2 Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD's?

Are they going to degrade without TRIM or can they look after them selves?

My system will be a 3930K, 32GB Dominator Ram on a Rampage IV Extreme.

Thanks in advance,

James

 

[Goldskis45]

In my opinion with drives over 120GB its better not raid 0 and just get a big HDD for your files and put all your programs on the SSDs... TRIM is the way to go... And also with SSDs unless you have a really good load balancer raid (1 or 0) doesn't improve performance much at all

 

[S_I_N]

gotta disagree with ya there most see almost double speed with raid 0 on ssd's i do on my 2 64's if I had the $$$ I'd be raiding larger ones as well. Most current ssd's in the 6gb/sec range have excellent BGC (background garbage collection) utilities. I have had zero issues with mine going on a year now.

 

[Goldskis45]

gotta disagree with ya there most see almost double speed with raid 0 on ssd's i do on my 2 64's if I had the $$$ I'd be raiding larger ones as well. Most current ssd's in the 6gb/sec range have excellent BGC (background garbage collection) utilities. I have had zero issues with mine going on a year now.

Thats with drives under 120GB (on their own they aren't living up to their potential) but with a set of 240GB drives unless he uses a load balancer he wont see much of an improvement from a single drive...

 

[jimbojames]

Whats a load balancer?

 

[Goldskis45]

A load balancer tells your computer to read from the two disks separately to get the same data, say you want to get a peice of data that is "A1 B2" it will tell one drive to get A1 and the other to get B2 to make the loading faster... On board raid controllers have a basic form of load balancing but with SSDs they really don't work as effectively as they could... To get the most out of SSDs in a raid, it is best to use a raid expansion card. Using them in a raid onboard will get you a performance increase, but, it won't be up to the true potential of the SSDs... Raid if you want, but unless you just want to squeeze that little bit of performance out that you probably won't notice unless you're using huge programs... And for Pete's sake don't raid 0 them if you do...

 

[Diablo]

I would say two things:

1). I did RAID SSDs, and it was more trouble than it was worth. The speeds you get are fantastic, but the thing you notice with an SSD is the latency, so the transfer speeds are somewhat less important. I prefer TRIM to garbage collection so I've only got the one SSD as my main drive. RAID also hugely increases the chance of data loss, so back up or don't complain you lost everything six months down the line.

2). On board RAID isn't great as Goldskis says, but a proper RAID card will increase your boot times by about 1 minute. This gets annoying if you need to shut your computer down for whatever reason. So overclocking to find the limits is incredibly frustrating and not worth the time if you have one installed. That and a good RAID card will set you back more than the price of a second SSD in most cases.

 

[Goldskis45]

2). On board RAID isn't great as Goldskis says, but a proper RAID card will increase your boot times by about 1 minute. This gets annoying if you need to shut your computer down for whatever reason. So overclocking to find the limits is incredibly frustrating and not worth the time if you have one installed. That and a good RAID card will set you back more than the price of a second SSD in most cases.

For the record I was saying I dislike on board RAID... Then again... My computers only get rebooted once a week and its scheduled in the wee hours of Sunday night...

 

[Vicey]

2). On board RAID isn't great as Goldskis says, but a proper RAID card will increase your boot times by about 1 minute. This gets annoying if you need to shut your computer down for whatever reason. So overclocking to find the limits is incredibly frustrating and not worth the time if you have one installed. That and a good RAID card will set you back more than the price of a second SSD in most cases.

This really depends on the raid card. I have HighPoint cards that only increase boot times by about 3 seconds and then I have LSI cards that increase boot times by 30 seconds. It really depends on which card it is you're using and also if your card has a battery backup but you decline to install it that will often increase boot times as the card will display a warning at boot.

 

[Rastalovich]

I hate raid 0, infact I hate raid. It's personal, I hate it.

I was thinking, 240g ssd x2 + raid card, as being suggested, scrap that and get a 240g pcie card that does 1000/900, without raid !! I noticed Scan doing them for ... £340 ish. Gotta be in the same ballpark price as those 3.

 

[S_I_N]

actually most of those pci-e ssd's are already raid configured themselves.

I have been running raid for well over 15 years and have never had any major issues. I've never heard of this load balancing thing either. 2 240gb ssd's in raid 0 will be fine.

I also fail to see how a add on card will reduce boot times by a minute when my raided 64's boot in less than a minute already

 

[Diablo]

A RAID card will put a minute onto your boot time as it boots up. TBH if you have a RAID card and choose to play without a BBU, especially in RAID 0 I hope you have a very rigorous back up routine. The LSIs and Adaptecs both increased boot time by around 45s-1min for me so it may depend on which cards you use.

 

[Goldskis45]

actually most of those pci-e ssd's are already raid configured themselves.

I have been running raid for well over 15 years and have never had any major issues. I've never heard of this load balancing thing either. 2 240gb ssd's in raid 0 will be fine.

I also fail to see how a add on card will reduce boot times by a minute when my raided 64's boot in less than a minute already

He was saying that add on cards can make boot times take longer... (some do some dont)

99% of pci-e SSDs use sandforce raid controllers with built in load balancers...

(this is getting a little off topic with the specific drives given at the beginning)

If you really think that you need 500GB of SSD speed then go ahead and raid 0... In the off chance a drive dies you're screwed out of your data for the most part... there are ways to recover it but its a pain in the arse...

Raid 1 will give you a performance increase, but not up to the drives full potential if you are using a onboard raid controller

IM NOT SAYING IT IS LIKE A 1/100th increase like some people are thinking... I'm just saying without a proper load balancer it won't run 100% of what it is capable of... (its like SLI and Crossfire) the output gets better with each card added, but the scaling is not 100% per card...

to continue the off topicness if you want insane data transfer speeds and you have a good amount of ram, look up ramdisk...

cheers

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

I hate raid 0, infact I hate raid. It's personal, I hate it.

I was thinking, 240g ssd x2 + raid card, as being suggested, scrap that and get a 240g pcie card that does 1000/900, without raid !! I noticed Scan doing them for ... £340 ish. Gotta be in the same ballpark price as those 3.

Rasta has spoken.

I remember spending 5 hours with a friend who is a software expert and hardware intermediate trying to get 4 way RAID 0 to work after RAID 5 failed and got absolutely nowhere, just created a single partition then refused to create any more; whichever you selected it would create that partition only. Neither Win7 nor Ubuntu (Oneric Ocelot) would install.

Fake RAID/ onboard RAID is an absolute abomination if you ask me.

PCI cards are the way foreward.

Or buckets of 40GB SSDs for running open-air bench/ folding etc rigs.

 

[dugdiamond]

What is everyones thoughts on RAIDing 2 Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD's?

Are they going to degrade without TRIM or can they look after them selves?

My system will be a 3930K, 32GB Dominator Ram on a Rampage IV Extreme.

Thanks in advance,

James

dont bother RAIDing with your set up

RAID is for people who want large data storage mediums with the extra bonus of speed

these are the CONS:

• will you be editing large files, on a low-end system??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'd SSDs really increase boot times that much to be beneficial??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'd SSDS require less maintenance, or be less prone to failure, than RAID'd HDDs??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'D SSDs increase gaming performance (apart from the initial game load) ??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'D SSDs increase movie (media) playing performance??? ... NO
  
• will many users be accessing large files over your RAID'd SSDs externally and simultaneously??? ... NO
  

so... the idea of RAIDing SSDs is pointless

 

[jimbojames]

dont bother RAIDing with your set up

RAID is for people who want large data storage mediums with the extra bonus of speed

these are the CONS:

• will you be editing large files, on a low-end system??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'd SSDs really increase boot times that much to be beneficial??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'd SSDS require less maintenance, or be less prone to failure, than RAID'd HDDs??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'D SSDs increase gaming performance (apart from the initial game load) ??? ... NO
  
• will RAID'D SSDs increase movie (media) playing performance??? ... NO
  
• will many users be accessing large files over your RAID'd SSDs externally and simultaneously??? ... NO
  

so... the idea of RAIDing SSDs is pointless

Good point well made

 

[tinytomlogan]

Pointless raiding unless the drives have a hardware garbage collection. Why has no one mentioned this bit...? Fuck sake boys its THE most important thing otherwise the drives will just bog them selves down and end up slower than a mechanical.

Some seriously shitty advise going round this forum atm.

 

[Vicey]

Pointless raiding unless the drives have a hardware garbage collection. Why has no one mentioned this bit...? Fuck sake boys its THE most important thing otherwise the drives will just bog them selves down and end up slower than a mechanical.

Some seriously shitty advise going round this forum atm.

Like this?

gotta disagree with ya there most see almost double speed with raid 0 on ssd's i do on my 2 64's if I had the $$$ I'd be raiding larger ones as well. Most current ssd's in the 6gb/sec range have excellent BGC (background garbage collection) utilities. I have had zero issues with mine going on a year now.

 

[jimbojames]

Ok - after reading all this, looks like I would be stupid to try and RAID them. For future reference, which SSD's have the hardware garbage collection.

Tom - how are you gonna deal with your SSD's in the recent video (within the last week) where you said that you were going to RAID a load of SSD's - am I assuming that RAID card you are going to use deals with all of the garbage collection?

Does anyone else read Toms posts in thier head in the same style as Tom using using his voice?

 

[Vicey]

Tom - how are you gonna deal with your SSD's in the recent video (within the last week) where you said that you were going to RAID a load of SSD's - am I assuming that RAID card you are going to use deals with all of the garbage collection?

I don't think he will care about the garbage collection because what he is doing is just an Overkill build. Meaning he just does it to do it. It's something every now and again he does to show us at home what things would be like with an insane amount of drives or quad SLI or whatever. Things we wouldn't buy because it's impractical or too exspensive but it pulls in high ratings and we all want to see what a system that is balls to the wall is like.

In this case his just going to benchmark those SSD's and see how high the IOPS and Read/Write is. I foresee 1.8GB/ps and over 500,000 IOPS as I have the same LSI cards he has and if LSI has given him all the software unlocks for full performance with SSD's they will deliver insane performance.