2x 128g Vertex 3 in Raid 0 on P67

[tech960]

Will this board be a bottleneck for this config? I am finally taking the plunge into SSD drives, and I figure I mine as well jump in head first and slam a Raid on it.

Is there any advantage on going with a single 256g drive other than price ?

Does TRIM still work in a raid config? I hate the way I cannot read temps on my raid drives, it bugs me.

 

[RampantAndroid]

The bottleneck will be the total lack of TRIM? I don't think any RAID controllers allow TRIM to work? I mean...the new sandforce controllers, at least on the PCIe cards, claim to have garbage collection, but who knows how it compares to TRIM...

 

[groberts101]

Sandforce uses trim differently than other controllers and will not regain speed once settled state throttles(called Durawrite) have hit. it's more about lifespan as the controller can utilize those dirty blocks much more efficiently for data rotation.

GC is king and will recover the dirty nand to prevent further throttling if the system is given sufficient logoff idle time. This is regardless of PCI-e or sata interfaces as it's inherent to the controller itself.

 

[SickBeast]

I was thinking about running SSD RAID, but then I read that it makes hardly any difference in real world scenarios. Windows might boot 1 or 2 seconds faster. Sure you'll get blazing fast sequential transfers, but you could achieve that with way more capacity using regular HDDs.

 

[groberts101]

about all I can say to anyone that talks about raids not being faster is that they probably didn't need the extra speed to begin with. Raid is not just about sequential performance as the small file performance increases by large amounts as the array gets wider.

All the one's I know who use it say they'll never go back. When I operate from a single SSD my system is slower at everything including boots/shutdowns(although I could care less about that sort of thing since I tun 24/7 anyways) and it almost seems HDD like when multitasking heavily.

In fact, I have a 240GB V3 that I beta tested and as nice as that drive is?.. it doesn't hold a candle to my 6 drive V2 array at anything besides navigating the OS's GUI. It's very noticeable as soon as you push it with some multiple transfers and heavy multi-app Adobe work while 12 IE tabs are open.

Also considering that the biggest benefit with raids is cumulative capacity increases?.. it becomes easy to see benefit when using the Sandforce controller with its built in throttling algorithms. Capacity is the greatest defense against degradation for SSD in general and it's even more important for Sandforce controlled drives due to Durawrite throttling. If you data sets are larger and you push your system on occasion?.. seeing really is believing. I wouldn't have over $1,200 worth of SSD running on this system if raid wasn't noticably faster, that's for sure.

 

[Hyperlite]

Right, as i understand it you won't get TRIM per se, but you will have GC. That being said, i agree the real world benefit wouldn't really be realized unless you have a specific extremely IO dependent task or you're serving large amounts of data to more than a local machine.

edit: groberts, what prompted you to set up that array? Morbid curiosity? full piggy bank? requirement of unquantifiable IO capacity? just curious. No one is debating the fact that RAID'd SSD's are faster than a single, that is going to hold true no matter the application. The question is whether or not it's worth it in the OP's application. Sounds like he is set on a 256GB capacity, be it one drive or two in raid.

on a related note, am i correct in that you prefer the sandforce GC implementation to a typical TRIM implementation? i'm still trying to rationalize the intricacies of all this SSD stuff.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Sandforce uses trim differently than other controllers and will not regain speed once settled state throttles(called Durawrite) have hit. it's more about lifespan as the controller can utilize those dirty blocks much more efficiently for data rotation.

GC is king and will recover the dirty nand to prevent further throttling if the system is given sufficient logoff idle time. This is regardless of PCI-e or sata interfaces as it's inherent to the controller itself.

Except the verdict is out on how good the sandforce controllers are at this, right? I mean, NAND BS from OCZ aside, the Sandforce 2200s are too new to really know.

 

[Hyperlite]

Except the verdict is out on how good the sandforce controllers are at this, right? I mean, NAND BS from OCZ aside, the Sandforce 2200s are too new to really know.

But they sure are expensive!

 

[Yamaraja]

Great question tech960.
I am running a similar system

Core i7 2600K @ 4.8
Asus P67 Deluxe
Corsair 8-8-8-24 2x4gb
Thermalright Silver Arrow
Sapphire 6950 2gb x 2 Xfire
2x 1.5tb wd black raid1, 2x 640 wd black raid1.
V3 120gb, Corsair F80 80gb

With 2 F80 ssd's in raid0 it was faster than 1 V3
I looks like 2 V3's raid0 will be stellar

 

[groberts101]

Except the verdict is out on how good the sandforce controllers are at this, right? I mean, NAND BS from OCZ aside, the Sandforce 2200s are too new to really know.

not from my perspective bud. I beta test the 240GB V3 and have had a 6 drive Sandforce V2 array for over a year now and have written well over 15TB's worth of specific degradation/recovery data to discover where this controllers internal algorithms live and breath. Much of my testing was combined with many others to reach the current state of understanding and advised maintenance/power tweaks for the Sandforce controller. Not bragging in the least, but simply pointing out the fact that "I get it" by now.

This new controller is much improved based on all the belly aching and whiners who complained of it being too easily throttled along with the slow recovery when you did reach a heavily throttled/hammered state. I know because I was one of the biggest around and spearheaded much of the Sandforce Durawrite revolt. lol

These new controllers have sort of an "on demand"/on the fly recovery mode which is much more aggressive than the fist gens. In fact, they're SO good that I would rarely recommend using a V2 when the funds permit.. even running off the sata2 ports. They're that much better even when choked down a bit by the sata2 bottleneck. Not to mention you'll be kicking yourself later on when even you netbook has a faster drive later on and it'll only be good for a external drive case.

I'd much rather have this drive to hand-me-down than a 25nm V2 without a doubt and would be happy to pay for it on the front end to get my moneys worth at the end. Plus the user experience will be much better in the long run.

The way were going now?.. sata2 will be all but dead in 4 more years and most will be 6G stuff having backwards compatibility to work with slower gear.