RAID 0 or not? Need suggestions.

[Bad Dude]

Hello every one,
I am pretty knowledgeable about PC hardware but I have been away for a little bit so I would imagine the SDDs handle the data a little differently.
Here's my system specs:
-Intel i920 Overclock to 4Ghz. Corsair H50.
-Motherboard, Asus P6T with the latest BIOS 1408.
-24GB or RAM tri channel.
-Video Sapphire Dirt 3 6950 2GB.
-LSI SAS3442E-R PCI Express SATA / SAS Controller Card . I have been using this card to run RAID 0 with two 1TB WD Black 64MB cache. Do you guys think this controller will overheat with the 2 Force 3 SSDs in RAID 0?
-Sound cards, modded Creative Xtreme Music PCI and Xonar DG PCI.
-I got about 8 other hard drives for my data ranging from 1TB to 2TB. I do lots of video work and Adobe stuffs so I need the storage. So all of my data go on these drives.
-I also squeeze in some PC gaming when I get a chance so I would think installing my games on the SSDs will give me best performance. Would installing the games on the SSDs are better or just put the game cache on the SSDs better for gaming?
-Since I will only have about 220GB total on the SSDs in RAID 0, should I install all of my big software on the WD Black RAID 0 and put the software cache on the SSDs for best performance?

-I want to use the new Force 3 120GB drives as my main windows drives in RAID 0. Here are my questions that need some suggestions:
a) Should I use the LSI controller or the onboard Intel RAID 0 for my SSDs? Which one will give me the fastest boot and response time.
b) How could I setup my system to extend the life and performance of my SSDs drives? From reading, I think the SSDs drives decrease in speed over time due to the more you write to the drives. I would like to minimize this problem and keep it running fastest over time.

-I have read some where that running RAID 0, I won't get TRIM support. Which one is faster to go with, TRIM or RAID 0?
-Intel latest drivers support TRIM in RAID 0, but I think my motherboard bios needs to have the latest Intel BIOS built in as my older X58 won't have it. I read some where that you could modify the BIOS to support TRIM in RAID 0 with this older X58, any one experience with it?

Please help with suggestions and any that I have mentioned. I am going to setup my system this coming week.

Thanks for the suggested help. I do have some ideas on the setup but I would like to get the best ways as I just want to this once for a long while.

 

[Bad Dude]

I guess no one could give me any suggestions.

 

[JAG87]

Nobody has said a word because it's a dumbass idea to run SSDs in raid-0 other than for a very fast transfer drive.

Same goes for hard drives. If your process benefits from fast transfer rates (i.e. moving around lots of GB) then fine, running raid-0 for any other reason is simply masochism.

And as a rule of thumb, any application where the majority of it's data by volume is very large files (i.e. games), does not benefit enough to warrant installing on an SSD. SSD's strongest suit is random read and write of small files. Sure, sequential read and write is also faster than HDDs, but it's usually bottle necked by another process (i.e. CPU de-compressing data for loading into RAM)

 

[IctusBrucks]

one thread right next to this is several pages long of people talking about RAID 0 and TRIM cordially... and this guy is somehow considered stupid for asking the same thing over here? I don't get it. Even if you do think RAID0 is not needed... that was the question in the thread title... why call him Stupid instead of just helpfully giving your opinion that it's not needed for him?


Sure I get where that mindset comes from.... but all of us are somewhat stupid for probably investing equal or greater time in making things fast compared to just getting work done So I won't judge.

But I also don't have a good answer... sorry I will say the question of the SATA controller heating up with RAID SSDs would never have even occured to me. So I will be following to see what people say.

It's interesting... so why not.

 

[Bad Dude]

Edited post:
Sorry, I greatly misunderstood you IctusBrucks. That's what happens when I read too fast. I deeply apologize for my previous statement. I regret the haste response.
Happy Holidays to every one once again.

 

[IctusBrucks]

what the what? I was coming to your defense. How did you gather I was insulting you?

I was saying the previous guy is crazy for being rude... this question is everywhere and nobody else is rude about it. I was saying its OK to want to try a feature just because you want to No judgement. What I meant was... is any of the "extreme tweaking" we do here necessary? No it's not. We do it partly beacause we enjoy the process and the results. So lay off people who may get too into it... maybe they enjoy it. That's enough for me.

 

[Coup27]

I would have posted in this thread but somehow I missed it.

I would avoid RAID0 on SSDs as I do not see any benefit. Sequentially, modern SSDs are already very fast. When you RAID0 them together the only metric which really increases are the sequentials, and unless you are reading from or writing to storage which can sustain those sequentials you won't see any benefit.

I ran 2 x Samsung 830 in RAID0 for a month and I saw no appreciably difference in real world usage. Sure my sequentials looked great in CDM, but other than that I saw no benefit. My 4k random read which is far more important did not improve. Boot time actually increased because I had to wait for my board to boot the Intel RAID controller where as running in non-RAID (AHCI), I do not have to boot this. This added about 2 seconds to overall boot time.

Add in the potential lack of TRIM, twice the failure potential to lose your data, increased cost of multiple SSDs and increased boot time, it just doesn't stack up IMO.

 

[IctusBrucks]

Boot time actually increased because I had to wait for my board to boot the Intel RAID controller where as running in non-RAID (AHCI), I do not have to boot this. This added about 2 seconds to overall boot time.

Same for me but on my asus mobo it feels like its even longer.

 

[groberts101]

Wow. I have been on this forums for almost 12 years and I have yet to see 2 hostile comments in a row. Never the less, thanks for the nice insults.
Happy Holidays to you both.

I think the above poster was in fact criticizing the previous poster for slamming you so eloquently.. so maybe cut him some slack.

This place is rampant with arrogance and overly critical comments and I'm actually surprised that the mods don't crack down on all the vicious and childish venting that goes on. Glad I was busy building motors all summer and seems like some things never change no matter how long you stay away. Worse than a soap opera sometimes and just hurts this sites credibility in the end. Nuf said.

As for the optimum way to make use of the hardware that you already have.

Raid the shnitzel out of it and set up a ramdisk to use for scratch. truth is, I've had more than a few anti-raid constituants sit at my system and they about pee themselves when they see how adobe and other editing software runs on it. We can speculate all we want but comparing the two arrangements side by side will make a believer out of most who do more than word process and play games with 7 browser tabs open. Raid is all about multitasking performance and those drives will not slow down with time if you take a couple of precautions.

Allow at least 20 gigs of slack space(I prefer to stripe only what I need as opposed to leaving space unallocated) to better help garbage collection and reduce slowdowns associated with exceeding free block reserves in any particular work session.

Allow some logged off idle time while maintaining power to the drives(S1 sleeps only as S3 and above will kill power and eliminate the background recovery process).. or just sit in the bios(IMO, not very convenient with the extra bootup times involved with raidcards and extra perepherials).

To gain better firsthand perspective, I would suggest getting the rig setup with a single drive and take an image of that install. Then secure erase both drives to reset them to factory fresh states and build an array to swap that same image over to.

I would also recommend using the native Intel chip to run the raid since response time and ram caching effect is slightly better than the card will allow. You'll lose some of that uber-fast transfer performance but the OS and apps will thank you when you're really doing a lot at once. Not that 550MB/s R/W speeds would be considered slow either.

My old X58 system runs 2 x sata3 cards for storage duty,.. one of them having 8 HDD's in R0,.. and the other with multiple SSD arrays and single drives. I used to multitask while things tranfered around between volumes but it's not even worth the time gained by doing something else during the transfers now because things run so fast. Full system scans and image restores will also blow your mind. :thumbsup:

 

[JAG87]

What the hell are you guys blabbering out. There is no insult to be found anywhere, people must have reading comprehension issues. And nobody was called stupid either. I criticized the idea not the person (smart people have dumbass ideas too), and offered helpful advice about avoiding RAID 0 at all costs, unless you are in a scenario where it is particularly beneficial to you such as temporarily moving around terabytes of data.

I'm sorry if it came off in a different tone. Happy holidays to you too!

 

[Bad Dude]

what the what? I was coming to your defense. How did you gather I was insulting you?

I was saying the previous guy is crazy for being rude... this question is everywhere and nobody else is rude about it. I was saying its OK to want to try a feature just because you want to No judgement. What I meant was... is any of the "extreme tweaking" we do here necessary? No it's not. We do it partly beacause we enjoy the process and the results. So lay off people who may get too into it... maybe they enjoy it. That's enough for me.

Hey,
I deeply apologize for misunderstood you earlier. I reread your post to my amaze, I totally did not saw it like that but yet I read that exact post. It's hard to describe but thanks for understanding.

 

[Bad Dude]

What the hell are you guys blabbering out. There is no insult to be found anywhere, people must have reading comprehension issues. And nobody was called stupid either. I criticized the idea not the person (smart people have dumbass ideas too), and offered helpful advice about avoiding RAID 0 at all costs, unless you are in a scenario where it is particularly beneficial to you such as temporarily moving around terabytes of data.

I'm sorry if it came off in a different tone. Happy holidays to you too!

I appreciate the suggestion you are trying to give. However, we don't know each other that well and the words you used are very aggressive and easily misunderstood.
It's very difficult for most people to absorb the good suggestions which such harsh words.
I am here to gain suggestions and knowledge and not get involve in this kind of conversation. Never the less, I will take the suggestion as you have put it and along with others that have given me similar suggestions.

Now if we could get back to the topic. It's advisable to leave a small amount of room left and not fill the drive up with data to peak performance, how should I do this?
1) Should I just partition the whole 120GB and then leave about 10% not used?
2) Or should I partition it to 108GB and leave the remain unpartition?
3) To extend the SSD life, I should put my browser cache and data cache to my regular HDD?

Thanks.

 

[JAG87]

I appreciate the suggestion you are trying to give. However, we don't know each other that well and the words you used are very aggressive and easily misunderstood.
It's very difficult for most people to absorb the good suggestions which such harsh words.
I am here to gain suggestions and knowledge and not get involve in this kind of conversation. Never the less, I will take the suggestion as you have put it and along with others that have given me similar suggestions.

Now if we could get back to the topic. It's advisable to leave a small amount of room left and not fill the drive up with data to peak performance, how should I do this?
1) Should I just partition the whole 120GB and then leave about 10% not used?
2) Or should I partition it to 108GB and leave the remain unpartition?
3) To extend the SSD life, I should put my browser cache and data cache to my regular HDD?

Thanks.

Well sorry once again, I guess we have different tolerances.

It is advisable to leave around 30-40% empty space on an SSD, not just 10%.

1) I would. Having the extra space is always useful for quick temporary file drops (i.e. desktop folder).
2) If you think you can't control this well without partitioning, you can partition, it's up to you.
3) No. Keep the any kind of cache on the SSD. Browsing cache is all small files, and browser performance will be feel significantly higher running from the SSD.

 

[Bad Dude]

Well sorry once again, I guess we have different tolerances.

It is advisable to leave around 30-40% empty space on an SSD, not just 10%.

1) I would. Having the extra space is always useful for quick temporary file drops (i.e. desktop folder).
2) If you think you can't control this well without partitioning, you can partition, it's up to you.
3) No. Keep the any kind of cache on the SSD. Browsing cache is all small files, and browser performance will be feel significantly higher running from the SSD.

I guess a new way of making friends is first to argue to understand each other better. No big deal.
Thanks for the ideas you have given. I think I should wait for a good deal with a 240GB or bigger to start this project as this would make more sense if I want to leave 40% free with all the software I run. The Adobe Suite 6 alone is going to take up lots of room, not to mention the Office 2013.

Thanks.

 

[JAG87]

I guess a new way of making friends is first to argue to understand each other better. No big deal.
Thanks for the ideas you have given. I think I should wait for a good deal with a 240GB or bigger to start this project as this would make more sense if I want to leave 40% free with all the software I run. The Adobe Suite 6 alone is going to take up lots of room, not to mention the Office 2013.

Thanks.

Just for reference, I run Office 2010 Pro Plus and Adobe CS6 Production Premium (plus other bulky stuff like a large XBMC install) from a 120GB SSD. That's with a system managed page file (on 16GB ram) and hibernation turned off, and I have over 50% free disk space.

Of course if you can afford a 240GB, go for it, but if you're waiting for a deal on it, I can tell you that a 120 or a 180 (intel) SSD will also be just fine.

 

[Bad Dude]

I bought the Intel 330 from Tiger Direct but it's back order and who knows when it will ship. So I request to cancel. I think I will use the 120GB as I have 2 of them.
Thanks.

 

[Railgun]

18 months with 4x 120GB Vertex3s. No slack given and I think just under 100GB free ATM.

Lots of PS work, games, some video editing and other misc things and have not had any performance issues. Long term storage is on another array.

Boot times are inconsequential. If somehow that's important, then consider it accordingly.

Avoiding RAID at all costs is a dumbass idea in and of itself. The ONLY downside is its risk of failure. Trim is also overplayed. Good GC is your friend.

If you have the HW, go for it. You won't be disappointed.

And IMHO, use a dedicated controller. Easy to move from rig to rig, upgrading with the same brand may allow you to retain the array and if you're going to do other than R0, performance will generally be better.

 

[Bad Dude]

18 months with 4x 120GB Vertex3s. No slack given and I think just under 100GB free ATM.

Lots of PS work, games, some video editing and other misc things and have not had any performance issues. Long term storage is on another array.

Boot times are inconsequential. If somehow that's important, then consider it accordingly.

Avoiding RAID at all costs is a dumbass idea in and of itself. The ONLY downside is its risk of failure. Trim is also overplayed. Good GC is your friend.

If you have the HW, go for it. You won't be disappointed.

And IMHO, use a dedicated controller. Easy to move from rig to rig, upgrading with the same brand may allow you to retain the array and if you're going to do other than R0, performance will generally be better.

Hey Thanks.
Let me go over point by point to make sure I got it.
-I should avoid RAID 0.
-Could you explain the abbreviations? GC and HW.
-I think I am going to use the two 120GB SSDs, one for the main boot drive and the 2nd for apps and games.
-I will continue the 2 WD Blacks in RAID 0 with the LSI card.

Thanks.

 

[Mfusick]

1000mb transfer speeds on an i7 with 16gb DDR3 is just beasty fast. Just sayin'

 

[Railgun]

Hey Thanks.
Let me go over point by point to make sure I got it.
-I should avoid RAID 0.
-Could you explain the abbreviations? GC and HW.
-I think I am going to use the two 120GB SSDs, one for the main boot drive and the 2nd for apps and games.
-I will continue the 2 WD Blacks in RAID 0 with the LSI card.

Thanks.

I was referring to the comment that using raid is a dumbass idea. I'm in the opposite camp. I'm all for it. But I understand the risks and limitations.

Garbage Collection and Hardware.

What are you going to used the blacks for in 0?

 

[Zxian]

Hey Thanks.
Let me go over point by point to make sure I got it.
-I should avoid RAID 0.
-Could you explain the abbreviations? GC and HW.
-I think I am going to use the two 120GB SSDs, one for the main boot drive and the 2nd for apps and games.
-I will continue the 2 WD Blacks in RAID 0 with the LSI card.

Thanks.

Don't avoid RAID0 altogether. There are times when it gives a performance benefit. For most scenarios that we use SSDs (boot and application drives) you likely won't see much of an improvement. I have my two 256GB Samsung 830's in RAID0 just because of the flexibility of the space. Complaining about the extra second or two on boot for the RAID controller to initialize on boot is really pulling hairs IMO.

GC = Garbage collection. Every modern drive has some ability to scan the drive for blocks that still contain data but are no longer in use. It can then erase the data from those blocks. Remember, SSDs cannot simply overwrite existing data the way a hard drive can - the blocks must be erased and then programmed (hence the abbrevation you'll see for P/E cycles). This is a feature that runs independently of TRIM and will typically only occur if the drive is idle.

HW = Hardware. Pretty self explanatory.

I've got my boot drives setup as RAID0, as well as another two 750GB WD Scorpio Black drives in RAID0 as my scratch space for ripping my movies and temporary storage. I find it gives me the best flexibility of space and still provides very good performance. The only real downside to running RAID0 on your boot drive is the increased chance of failure. However, if you use the system as you suggested (one drive for OS, one for games) you'll likely have to reinstall all the games anyways if your boot drive fails.

 

[JAG87]

The only real downside to running RAID0 on your boot drive is the increased chance of failure.

Actually, there is a second downside which is increased cost and zero ROI. That's pretty important I'd say.

 

[Bad Dude]

You guys are wonderful right now. Thanks so much for the knowledge pour out.

I have used RAID 0 for many years from Raptors to Black WD. I had a failure once but I think the card overheated and lost one of the drive in the array. I could not rebuild and had to restore the image. The same drives have been running well for almost a month with constant usage.

So my decision is stuck on whether I should use RAID 0 for the SSDs on the LSI controller or on the onboard Intel ICH10R?

Right now I have the WD Blacks running RAID 0 on the LSI card. I have used both RAID 0 and non RAID but I found the RAID0 more responsive. So I have always favor RAID0 but with SSDs and TRIM, I wonder if I'll lose out on performance using the RAID0.
I have the Corsair Force 3 so these got GC.
BTW, I always image the main drive back up in case it fail. So 15 minutes or less and all restored. I do regular backups. I have over 30 TBs of drive storage. I bought drives when I see good deals when I was working. Now after 1.5 years of unemployment, I finally found work but it's at a $10 an hour pay cut so I cannot spend as before.

Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge and suggestions.

 

[TemjinGold]

There's no increased cost if he already has the drives.

 

[Zxian]

Actually, there is a second downside which is increased cost and zero ROI. That's pretty important I'd say.

If he's already purchased the hardware, the increased cost is zero. You do get a return on the flexibility of the space. I've now got 138GB of games installed on my system. If I had setup my previous 120GB SSDs as independent drives, I would have had to split up the games installations to separate locations.