3 x X25-V or 2 x Vertex2/Agility2 in raid 0?

[keplenk]

Hi,

I saw a good deal in Fry's Electronics for the X25-V 40gb Intel SSD for just $69.99. Since I'll be upgrading to an SSD with a budget of $250, this triggered my interest.

Originally, I planned on buying a 2 x 64gb Vertex 2 or Agility 2 this coming thanksgiving sale and run these in Raid 0. There are no good sale yet for these drives.

BTW, I don't mind losing TRIM.

This is the link for the Fry's deal:

http://www.frys.com/product/6165889?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

If I buy the Intel SSD, I'll spend $216 including tax and shipping. If I buy the Agility 2 now, it is $26 dollars more after rebate. Either way, I still meets my budget.

Please give me advice on what route to go, 3 x Intell SSD or 2 x OCZ sandforce drives?

BTW, I also have a 2 x 500gb Samsung Spinpoint drives that run in Raid 0. I use that as my storage and caching drive so that the SSD would get pounded much.

Thank you so much.

EDIT: I have a file server that backs up my stuff. So data loss (just incase of a drive failure in one of my raid drives) is safe.

 

[Emulex]

two microcenter G2 (Sandforce SF1222) 64gb came out to be like $212 after tax.

i wonder if you turn on disk compression (whole) if the X25-V would read SF-1222 levels?

 

[keplenk]

Yes. I saw that Microcenter branded SSDs which has Sandforce controllers that also made me interested. I heard that ADATA were the ones who made the drives for Microcenter. I assume that these drives will perform like the ADATA ones. I'm actually waiting for a review for these drives before I try it. But I'm actually tempted as I'm 4 miles away from a Microcenter store and we only have 3.5% sales tax there. If I don't like it, I could just return it without restocking fee.

I'm really thorn about the X25-V because it is really really cheap. If I raid 3 drives, the writes speeds will most likely scale well and as a plus, I get killer reads speeds. One more advantage that I could think of is 4K random/read/writes which will be better compared to sa SF drives (not sure about this).

Thanks for your reply Emulex.

I would really appreciate it if someone else would share their take about this question of mine.

Thank you.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, the X25-V has pretty poor sequential write speeds, because it only uses 5 channels. Whereas Sandforce drives can max out your write speeds, assuming that the data that you're writing is compressable.

I dunno, seems like a toss-up to me.

 

[Emulex]

alright i'm gonna have to hook up one of these drives and compress the filesystem and see what kind of speeds it gets.


bbiaf.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

You seem really set on RAID here, but I just don't see the allure. Larger SSDs are faster than smaller ones because the controllers access the NAND in RAID-like fashion (more NAND chips/channels = faster drive).

Buying smaller drives just to RAID-0 them only surpasses their larger brethren by small percentages, if at all. And you introduce multiple points of failure and configuration/management overhead.

You have a $250 budget; I say just buy the largest, best single drive that your budget allows.

 

[Emulex]

two $69 x25-V 40gb will destroy any $140 solution by a long shot. remember most of do 95% read and 5% or less of writing. two X25-V in Raid-0 has 500 meg of sequential read which is sick.

and if the ssd itself is raid-0 then raid-0'ing two of them is essentially raid-0+0

 

[keplenk]

two $69 x25-V 40gb will destroy any $140 solution by a long shot. remember most of do 95% read and 5% or less of writing. two X25-V in Raid-0 has 500 meg of sequential read which is sick.

and if the ssd itself is raid-0 then raid-0'ing two of them is essentially raid-0+0

That is what I was actually thinking since writing on an SSD is likely to be that low %. Higher read speeds would be better.

I found some non-official benchmarks of the new Microcenter G2 drives from a forum user:

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=34255907&postcount=66

He compared it to his intel SSD x25-m. I'm not sure if the difference is good or what but it looks like the microcenter can compete with the intel one.

Here is a review of the X25-V on Quad Raid. He also included just 2 drives in his benchmarks. These are real world tests:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/s...l-x25-v-ssd-40gb-–-quad-raid-0-performance/8/

I also checked the seq writes speeds and it looks like it scales pretty well. However, I don't think I'm going for quad raid since it will break my budget. I'm thinking of just going 3 and space is around 120gb. I'm guessing the the seq write on 3 would be around 120mb/s.

The cost of three x25-v ($216 including everything) makes me really tempted but I don't want to feel I made the wrong move.

@LokutusofBorg

Thanks for the advice. I'll surely think over what you said and maybe I'll just consider going for a bigger sdd.

Any more advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you guys for your time.

 

[Zap]

I heard that ADATA were the ones who made the drives for Microcenter. I assume that these drives will perform like the ADATA ones. I'm actually waiting for a review for these drives before I try it. But I'm actually tempted as I'm 4 miles away from a Microcenter store and we only have 3.5% sales tax there.

They should perform like any other SF1222 based drive.

You're lucky with your tax and living by Micro Center. Then again, if I were in the same situation I'd be buying way too much stuff that I didn't need. ^_^

I'm really thorn about the X25-V because it is really really cheap. If I raid 3 drives, the writes speeds will most likely scale well and as a plus, I get killer reads speeds.

I did three in RAID0 before. Actually, three of the Kingston drives, which are the same thing (I even flashed the firmware to Intel). Here are my results:

The funny thing is that it didn't feel much faster.

Out of the two choices I'd probably choose the two Sandforce 60GB in RAID0 due to simplified wiring and installation (you can buy a 2x2.5" to one 3.5" adapter), and of course for future use in case you want to add a third 60GB drive or you split them up because 60GB by itself is more useful than 40GB by itself.

 

[keplenk]

They should perform like any other SF1222 based drive.

You're lucky with your tax and living by Micro Center. Then again, if I were in the same situation I'd be buying way too much stuff that I didn't need. ^_^



I did three in RAID0 before. Actually, three of the Kingston drives, which are the same thing (I even flashed the firmware to Intel). Here are my results:

The funny thing is that it didn't feel much faster.

Out of the two choices I'd probably choose the two Sandforce 60GB in RAID0 due to simplified wiring and installation (you can buy a 2x2.5" to one 3.5" adapter), and of course for future use in case you want to add a third 60GB drive or you split them up because 60GB by itself is more useful than 40GB by itself.

Wow, those are killer speeds. Thank you for your input and providing screenshots. Since 3 drives does really make things faster (from your experience), I think I'll really just go with the Sandfornce ones. I'll pass on the Intel ones.

Thanks everyone for your help. It's been really really great info.