Intel SSDs - Which is better - 2 X 80GB or 1 X 160GB?

[ArizonaSteve]

So I'm about to pull the trigger on one or more intel SSDs (after I get back from England on the 31st of August). I'm using a Gigabyte P35 board with an ICHR9 SATA controller. Should I be looking at running 2 80GB SSDs in RAID0 or a single 160GB drive?

Will there be TRIM support for the RAIDed drives in Windows 7 for the P35/ICHR9 combo?

 

[rcpratt]

My understanding is that the TRIM command will not work in RAID. I chose to go with a 160GB for this reason, although 2 80GBs in RAID0 would obviously perform better in most areas.

 

[Idontcare]

What rcpratt is true about trim and raid at this time. It's not that raid fundamentally won't work with trim, but just like trim and Vista it won't work with raid until someone releases the raid drivers which support trim.

But raid-0 bandwidth would still be 2x, even in a degraded non-trim environment. And at 2x, the performance of a non-trim raid-0 array is still likely to be better than the performance of a solitary SSD with trim enabled.

For desktops where you have the case space to add multiple drives I would go with the raid-0 configuration and just keep adding drives to your array as your budget allows...commensurately increasing total array capacity and speed at the same time.

For laptops with limited space for drives I'd go with the largest single SSD your budget allows.

 

[ilkhan]

My opinion would be a simple question, what are you doing that needs more than 250MB/s read speed, and/or 80MB/s write speed? If you can answer that in a way meaningful to you, go with dual drives. Otherwise Id say get the single 160GB and you can feed it to a laptop or hand-me-down computer in the future when you upgrade again.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: ilkhan
My opinion would be a simple question, what are you doing that needs more than 250MB/s read speed, and/or 80MB/s write speed? If you can answer that in a way meaningful to you, go with dual drives. Otherwise Id say get the single 160GB and you can feed it to a laptop or hand-me-down computer in the future when you upgrade again.

+100, awesome post :thumbsup: and precisely worded as exactly the best kind of advice I can imagine.

OP - you should be paypal'ing this guy for his services here. :thumbsup:

 

[spufaru]

I'm facing the 160 vs 80 dilemma myself for my boot drive, more a function of how much space I need for my most often used games/apps outside of the Vista HPx64 footprint (W7 in Oct) than squeezing out RAID0 performance. I'm inclined to get the 80, play around and see if I like it, then go 2x if necessary.

Other than paying $20-30 more for 2x80's, is there any downside to going this route versus just having one 160gb?

And is there any way to quantify whether the 2x80 RAID0 speed boost > speed degradation in worst case filled up non-TRIM scenario?

One more noob question - is there any sort of "manual" TRIM utility that can be run occasionally (akin to a degrag) to keep things cleaned up? My guess is if I'm running a single 80gb drive, my O/S footprint would be about 35gb, permanent apps 20gb leaving about 25% free space which would be recycled every few weeks among my games du jour.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: ilkhan
My opinion would be a simple question, what are you doing that needs more than 250MB/s read speed, and/or 80MB/s write speed? If you can answer that in a way meaningful to you, go with dual drives. Otherwise Id say get the single 160GB and you can feed it to a laptop or hand-me-down computer in the future when you upgrade again.

:thumbsup:

 

[TemjinGold]

Also keep in mind that the 160 is faster than the 80 to begin with as speeds scale with size on SSDs. The RAID0 would also increase latency and access times, which are the principle points that make SSDs faster to begin with. To really make use of the greatly increased bandwidth of RAID0, you would also need to get a dedicated controller card (and a decent one) as your onboard RAID isn't going to grant you that kind of bandwidth.

 

[jkresh]

TemjinGold, actually you are wrong about that, onboard can handle raid 0 fine (with significantly higher bandwidth then even a couple of ssd's can do), its raid5/6 where a dedicated card starts to make a major difference (as there are parity calculations required, while raid 0 is simple).

 

[Spikesoldier]

running x25m 80gb g1 here.

planning to get second for desktop raid0 use, we are in the same hardware profile (p35/ICH9R).

despite being swindled out of TRIM support i am more inclined to get another g1 below market price for g2 on a no compromise performance standpoint and to double space.

i understand that the internal workings of the intel drives is that it is already using a multiple (10 member) raid0 setup anyway. i am sure that because intel was able to make such an efficient design, controller and all, that they were able to squeeze the performance they did out of it and be the benchmark all others struggled to parallel. i think that the performance to be gained will be less dramatic than say indilinx drives or i guess failed j microns (they were internal raid0 too). to put it in other words, i think that the gains will be more linear and not exponential. I have read posts that state that there are diminishing returns on RAID0 past the second or third drive, depending on what RAID controller you use. If you are in the same boat as OP and I, and are using the RAID on southbridge (onboard), taking it past two member RAID0 makes the bottleneck the controller unless you have an addon, quality, server class RAID controller. Expect these to be in the PCIe 4x flavor, and cost hundreds of dollars, not the $20 freeship PCI SATA RAID special.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: ilkhan
My opinion would be a simple question, what are you doing that needs more than 250MB/s read speed, and/or 80MB/s write speed? If you can answer that in a way meaningful to you, go with dual drives. Otherwise Id say get the single 160GB and you can feed it to a laptop or hand-me-down computer in the future when you upgrade again.

For that matter you don't NEED and SSD. On my system there was a noticeable difference going from a single to RAID 0 --

I didn't need the SSD at all - I wanted it and I wanted it as fast as possible. I even tried three and four, but There were diminishing returns after two and not worth the money.

 

[TemjinGold]

Originally posted by: jkresh
TemjinGold, actually you are wrong about that, onboard can handle raid 0 fine (with significantly higher bandwidth then even a couple of ssd's can do), its raid5/6 where a dedicated card starts to make a major difference (as there are parity calculations required, while raid 0 is simple).

I stand corrected.

 

[taltamir]

160GB: cheaper, TRIM works, faster individually, can fit in a laptop if needed (will matter for resale value), no raid headaches, better latency
2x80GB: No trim, worse latency, overall faster by quite a lot, more likely to have catastrophic failure

Am I missing something? most of the issues are really minor, the big ones are really cost, raid headaches, and speed (should be better on 2x80GB). i'd stick to 1x80GB for this SSD generation, you can just remove and install games as needed instead of keeping them all on the SSD all the time.

 

[jkresh]

taltamir, as for likely to have catastrophic failure, while its still possible with an ssd its quite different then with harddrives (I would never recomend runing raid 0 for important data without nightly backup on traditional drives, on ssd it might be ok), basically because of how ssd's work unless the internal controller breaks you shouldn't loose data (and even then you should be able to get that replaced and recover the drive), the vast majority f things that can go wrong with a spindle drive, can't happen with an ssd so while raid 0 still has a higher risk then not using raid, or going with 1 or 5, its pretty low for an ssd. (all that beign said, even though I have a decent hardware raid card I just ordered 1 160gig g2, instead of 2 80's)

 

[taltamir]

well, yes... it is more likely than a single ssd, but still less likely than a spindle drive. Either way, backup will save the day.

 

[ArizonaSteve]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I guess my major concern is the TRIM support for Windows 7 on the RAIDed drives. Is the P35 chipset sufficiently out of date that the likelihood of Intel not updating the drivers is high? Is there the possibility of an external utility being developed that would allow for a manual TRIM of the RAIDed drives?

I've also considered that the gen 1 Intel drives with their built-in garbage collection might be a better choice.

Without any further clarification, I'm leaning towards the single 160GB drive right now.