Ssd or hdd - looking for recommendation

[montereywill]

Hello everyone. I feel as if I should be able to answer my own question based on all the in depth information I have read on Anandtech, but I feel like just when I get to a point of resolution some new bit of information is released. I present my conundrum.

I am in the process of building a new computer for my home - personal use. I am planning on either a new Intel Core i7 980X CPU or to overclock the dickens out of a 920/930 when I get my hands on one or the other. I am putting this all in a Corsair 800D case, and will be running a dual loop watercooling setup on the new Gigabyte X58-UD7 motherboard. Corsair Dominator GT memory (as fast as I can go), and last but not least I plan on running two to three of the new nVidia cards in SLI when they become available. My dilemma is what to use as storage. I find myself torn between going with SSD or sticking with a mechanical hard drive.

My ultimate goal is make the system as quiet as I can which I realize is a big positive to a SSD, but my concerns with SSD are their long term performance. Sure, they seem fast as can be right out of the box, but are they worth it in the long term. My understanding is that they degrade over time. I am concerned that the reliability is compromised, and I wouldn't want to buy something that dies out quicker than a traditional drive especially considering I continue to use my old systems, or I give them away to friends/family when I upgrade. I should also mention that I was leaning towards running either three Raptor 300GB drives with an Intel X-25 E 64 GB on a Adaptec 5805Z controller in Raid 0 with MaxIQ Enabled for read caching via the Intel SSD; talking with a tech at Adaptec I was informed that they are working on adding write caching to MaxIQ in the future. If I run SSD's only then I would go with 3 identical SSD's in Raid 0 on the same card. I am not concerned with max capacity as I have a 27TB server running raid 6 in my home. I run Acronis with incremental backups to secure my data, and everything important is stored on the home server anyways. I just want all out speed.

My use for my home PC is split between a couple different things. I do play PC games when I have the time, but I also use my PC for Autocad and 3D building plan design, along with using Microsoft Office for work I bring home. I also use this PC for making HD home videos I pull off my camcorder. So my questions really boil down to the following. Based on my setup and use:

a) Is SSD (3 SSD's in Raid 0) worth the cost?
b) Should I stick with 3 Raptors and X-25 E with MaxIQ?
c) Is Raid 0 worth it? Any noticable benefits?
d) What are alternatives?

I appreciate any good advice any of you can give me. I must admit I am pretty lost when I comes to Hard Drive performance when the conversations turn to Reads, Writes, Sequential, IOPS and such. I understand most other things pretty well, but for some reason other than capacity, interface, and spindle speeds I get a headache with Hard Drives.

Thanks in advance.

 

[fffblackmage]

From what I know, TRIM doesn't work with raid for SSDs. And is raid worth it on SSDs? Mostly if you really need the crazy high transfer speeds, though SSDs have very very high transfer speeds as it is - enough to max out SATA 3gb for reads.

For long term use, it's still somewhat questionable since SSDs are still relatively new. While they do degrade, reliability can be sustained with a good microcontroller. As in when a flash cell stops working (or after the limit on number of writes has been reached), the microcontroller on the SSD will stop using it. The other thing is that reading and writing a lot to an SSD can also shorten the useful lifespan. So, I guess it depends what you're planning to do.

Well, I'm just an SSD newbie. Hopefully, someone else can provide additional input.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Ok, excuse my bluntness, but you obviously have a lot of money. Right now the #1 way to get a noticeable speed boost with general computing is to add a SSD. You'd be near-ludicrous to build such an expensive system and not throw a SSD into the mix.

With that said, forget RAIDing them. Yes, you'll get better sequential reads / writes, but for the moment it'll be at the cost of losing TRIM - the command that allows a SSD to flush "deleted" items and return performance to the way it should be (from my understanding). SSDs may lose some performance in the long term, but they'll still blow mechanical hard drives out of the water. They may also die earlier than mechanical HDDs (let's say 5-10 years, compared to some HDDs that last 10-15+), but with multiple HDDs running you're far more likely to have one or two of those go before that time anyway. And besides, in 5 years, whatever storage solution you're using now will be horribly outdated.

With that said, I would suggest picking up a SINGLE high-capacity SSD now (160GB X-25M G2 or perhaps 256GB Indilinx-based, or wait for new Micron / Sandforce / Intel offerings), and other drives depending on what you do with the computer. For me personally, I have the OS + common applications (Office, Photoshop, etc.) on the SSD, leaving me with ~50-60% space free, and all of my games (160GB worth so far, with another ~50-100GB left to install...) on a mechanical drive. If I could afford it, I'd pick up a second SSD just for the games.

 

[bjamm2]

I would get two SSD in a raid (If you have the money just get one large SSD to avoid raid and keep TRIM) for the extra space. Install your OS, programs and a few games that will fit on the space. The more space free on an SSD the faster they run.

Get a large 1-2tb WD Black drive/Samsung for everything else. Use that for your temp files, autocad, and video editing.

This is what i've setup and it runs very nicely. All extra program files/games are on my 1.5gb Samsung and I only have the OS/Programs on my SSD. It flys in loading and its a very noticeable difference to my previous setup. I dont have raid however and just bought one 60gb SSD as that was large enough for me at this time as I have everything else network accessible from my server.

 

[Glenn]

I just want to know how to get on your "friends and family" list?

 

[taltamir]

raid isn't all that worth it on SSDs even ignoring TRIM, if you take into account TRIM not working in RAID then it is absolutely NOT worth it. You will be taking a huge penalty to speed from using RAID...

as for SSD vs HDD... the correct answer is SSD AND HDD. A nice 1+TB HDD for storage, and a spry little SSD for OS, programs, and a few select games. (SSD makes neverwinter nights 2 playable...)

 

[montereywill]

I will be honest, but TRIM is what I was really trying to figure out. If I understand everything correctly SSD w/TRIM > SSD w/RAID. I have noticed that SSD drives like those from OCZ list Raid Support in their feature list, and even the Colossus drives have onboard RAID 0 since they are 4 SSD's combined together in one solution.

Now I just got off the phone with tech support at OCZ (I never call the sales line for obvious reasons) and after about 15 minutes speaking with them they explained that while TRIM is very nice for SSD's, Windows 7 also supports GC which in their opinion is TRIM Lite. Furthermore, even though the SSD will degrade over time it will still be leaps and bounds faster than the mechanical drives it replaces according to both you guys and OCZ. So, based on what I see on Anandtech if I am to go with a SSD setup then the OCZ Vertex LE is the drive of choice in terms of overall performance due mostly in part to the SandForce 1500 Controller.

So if I choose to go with the OCZ Vertex LE 200GB (forgetting price for a second), and assuming I was to go with three identical drives, would this in fact oversaturate the SATA 3Gbps interface, or would the virtue of using a PCI-E Raid card provide for even more usable bandwidth than what is available using an onboard controller?

Seems like I am leaning heavily towards SSD now, but any additional information/advice you all can give would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[montereywill]

Just saw taltamir's post.

Consensus seems to be leaning more towards the route of using a single SSD (OCZ Vertex LE 200GB) as the OS/Programs drive, and then go with a 1 TB (Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0Gbps) for general storage and such.

Correct me if I am wrong, but based on what I am hearing that a single SSD alone (let alone the Vertex LE) almost completely saturates the SATA II interface, and that raiding 3 SSD's together in Raid 0 would be a paper champion, but not much better performance wise given my intended use and the onboard controller, and that TRIM > Raid.

Again, I am going on input here, and what I have gathered from different reviews.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hacp]

I will be honest, but TRIM is what I was really trying to figure out. If I understand everything correctly SSD w/TRIM > SSD w/RAID. I have noticed that SSD drives like those from OCZ list Raid Support in their feature list, and even the Colossus drives have onboard RAID 0 since they are 4 SSD's combined together in one solution.

Now I just got off the phone with tech support at OCZ (I never call the sales line for obvious reasons) and after about 15 minutes speaking with them they explained that while TRIM is very nice for SSD's, Windows 7 also supports GC which in their opinion is TRIM Lite. Furthermore, even though the SSD will degrade over time it will still be leaps and bounds faster than the mechanical drives it replaces according to both you guys and OCZ. So, based on what I see on Anandtech if I am to go with a SSD setup then the OCZ Vertex LE is the drive of choice in terms of overall performance due mostly in part to the SandForce 1500 Controller.

So if I choose to go with the OCZ Vertex LE 200GB (forgetting price for a second), and assuming I was to go with three identical drives, would this in fact oversaturate the SATA 3Gbps interface, or would the virtue of using a PCI-E Raid card provide for even more usable bandwidth than what is available using an onboard controller?

Seems like I am leaning heavily towards SSD now, but any additional information/advice you all can give would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Go with Intel. Forget the sandforce.