SSD Upgrade Consideration

[Tristor]

I recently built a computer and I put 2x Intel X25-M G2 80GB in RAID0 in it. The speed is fine, although I have noticed that people with single C300s are beating me on load-ins on LoL. My primary problem is I've run out of space (which I knew would happen), and I really feel like I need more storage.

My budget is $1500 for SSDs. I'm trying to decide if I should add 4 more 80GB G2s, rebuild my RAID0 array and reinstall for ~480GB of total storage, or if I would be better off moving to the new Sandforce SF-1200 based OCZs, and get 2 of the OCZ Vertex 2 200GBs and put them in RAID0 and scrap my current G2s.

Any thoughts on the upgrade? I am specifically trying to figure out if the performance boost from striping across more drives will boost my performance with the G2s to match/exceed what the 2xVertex 2s will do, and if I should worry about reliability with a 6 drive RAID0 array. Granted, I don't really have any important data there (I use Steam, so reinstalling is easy).

 

[kevinqian]

I think raid helps more with sequential read/writes than random read/writes. Hard to say which setup will be faster without head to head comparisons.

 

[Tristor]

Well my workload I suppose would be most sequential, since it'll all be installation of OS/apps, booting, opening applications, and loading in textures/maps for games. That's it basically. This is a games PC almost solely.

 

[Old Hippie]

I'm trying to decide if I should add 4 more 80GB G2s,

I'm having one helluva time with 2 in RAID0 on my W7 64bit install.

There's no way I'd add 4 more and increase the possibility of failure.

If you have the cash go with the bigger drives.

 

[kevinqian]

booting, loading apps, and games are mostly random reads/writes. sequential is more like moving large blu-ray rips or files around. When games load, they request a whole bunch of small files and i would consider that more random than sequential.

 

[sub.mesa]

Yes, sequential is large files; random is booting/launching applications.

I recently built a computer and I put 2x Intel X25-M G2 80GB in RAID0 in it. The speed is fine, although I have noticed that people with single C300s are beating me on load-ins on LoL. My primary problem is I've run out of space (which I knew would happen), and I really feel like I need more storage.

Since you are running SSDs in RAID0, that means you don't have TRIM.

You should also never fill up your filesystem especially on an SSD; internal fragmentation will start to occur, lowering performance of both SSDs.

So it could be that the performance of your SSDs has degraded, if you did not reserve extra spare space beyond the default 6.8% reserved by default. You can check this by running AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark, two benchmarks that test random I/O performance.

Could you perhaps run both benchmarks on your RAID0 and post your results here? That should tell us a lot about your RAID0 current performance levels, and whether serious performance degradation has kicked in yet.

If it did, you could do a secure erase on both and set them up again, perhaps with much greater speed.

 

[Tristor]

I'm aware of the TRIM limitation. More specifically TRIM isn't supported on the G2s in non-RAID configurations either. However, performance is just gravy for me at the moment, I am more concerned about increasing available capacity. 160GB isn't enough storage.

 

[*kjm]

More specifically TRIM isn't supported on the G2s in non-RAID configurations either.

You mean G1's right? G2's can use TRIM in non-RAID.

You could always just install your OS on your raid (80's) and get a couple of Crucial C300's.
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=...tate-Drive-MLC

If you are thinking of spending this kind of money you may want to see how big and how much the G3's are going to be. The 160Gb may end up at 360Gb and the same price... get a hard drive to hold you over till Sep/Oct???

 

[allthatisman]

I'm aware of the TRIM limitation. More specifically TRIM isn't supported on the G2s in non-RAID configurations either. However, performance is just gravy for me at the moment, I am more concerned about increasing available capacity. 160GB isn't enough storage.

If performance is "just gravy" why not save the money and go for something like RAID 0 600gb Velociraptors, or even 2 of the Momentus XT drives? I have one coming, hopefully tomorrow and I will post my impressions of it once it's installed and has some games on it.

I recently bought a WD SiliconEdge Blue 64gb SSD last week for 2 reasons, 1. it was dirt cheap, and 2. It was supposed to be much faster than even the Intel drives at loading games specifically. According to this review by Tech Report:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18757/6

The Intel drives are no faster than an older 150gb Velociraptor at loading games. I have personally had a G1 X25, G2 X25 160, GSkill Titan(old JMicron drive... ewww), and my current SSD. I have also had both a 150 and 300 gb Vraptor. IMO SSD's are not at all worth it for gaming, and that is all I use my computer for. Games are large in size(very bad for SSD's), and SSD's don't really load the games THAT much faster... especially your Intel drive(s).

SSD's are definitely the future, and are certainly worth it it you open applications and reboot all day long... but in the end I didn't really notice much of a difference between even a Velociraptor and any of the aforementioned SSD's. I think for a pure gaming machine though, larger, non-SSD drives are what you should be looking at.

 

[Tristor]

You mean G1's right? G2's can use TRIM in non-RAID.

The G2s don't support TRIM. They initially did, but they pulled the firmware. The G3s /will/ support TRIM, however.

 

[Tristor]

If performance is "just gravy" why not save the money and go for something like RAID 0 600gb Velociraptors, or even 2 of the Momentus XT drives? I have one coming, hopefully tomorrow and I will post my impressions of it once it's installed and has some games on it.

The performance is fine, but I don't want to decrease performance by going back to hard drives. I have the budget necessary to keep with SSDs while increasing capacity, the question is more about reliability vs performance trade-offs, as either direction will net me ~400GB of SSD storage.

The Intel drives are no faster than an older 150gb Velociraptor at loading games. I have personally had a G1 X25, G2 X25 160, GSkill Titan(old JMicron drive... ewww), and my current SSD. I have also had both a 150 and 300 gb Vraptor. IMO SSD's are not at all worth it for gaming, and that is all I use my computer for. Games are large in size(very bad for SSD's), and SSD's don't really load the games THAT much faster... especially your Intel drive(s).

SSD's are definitely the future, and are certainly worth it it you open applications and reboot all day long... but in the end I didn't really notice much of a difference between even a Velociraptor and any of the aforementioned SSD's. I think for a pure gaming machine though, larger, non-SSD drives are what you should be looking at.

I definitely notice a marked difference in loading times between SSDs and not using SSDs, as my older computer isn't much worse than my new computer and has 2x6401AALS (WD 640GB Caviar Black) in RAID0 short-stroked (only using 150GB on the outer edge on each drive, 300GB partition total), and it's faster than 2x150GB Velociraptors in RAID0, but it's also much slower than 2x80GB Intel X25-M in RAID0.

I'm not new to the storage game, and I realize the diminishing returns of the large quantity of money I'm willing to put into this, but once again I'm more concerned about maintaining (or possibly improving) performance while achieving my capacity goal (~400GB), and not losing significant amounts of reliability.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

The G2s don't support TRIM. They initially did, but they pulled the firmware. The G3s /will/ support TRIM, however.

[citation needed]

There was a bug in the initial firmware release that added TRIM support, but it was fixed. The internets seem to agree with me:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/intel-ssd-firmware-02hd-brings-back-trim-support-sans-bugs/

http://www.slashgear.com/intel-x25-m-and-x18-m-ssds-get-trim-fix-0264893/

 

[allthatisman]

The performance is fine, but I don't want to decrease performance by going back to hard drives. I have the budget necessary to keep with SSDs while increasing capacity, the question is more about reliability vs performance trade-offs, as either direction will net me ~400GB of SSD storage.



I definitely notice a marked difference in loading times between SSDs and not using SSDs, as my older computer isn't much worse than my new computer and has 2x6401AALS (WD 640GB Caviar Black) in RAID0 short-stroked (only using 150GB on the outer edge on each drive, 300GB partition total), and it's faster than 2x150GB Velociraptors in RAID0, but it's also much slower than 2x80GB Intel X25-M in RAID0.

I'm not new to the storage game, and I realize the diminishing returns of the large quantity of money I'm willing to put into this, but once again I'm more concerned about maintaining (or possibly improving) performance while achieving my capacity goal (~400GB), and not losing significant amounts of reliability.

What games in particular are you finding a "marked improvement"? I'm just curious, because I have not seen it yet. Since you seem to have the disposable income to dump ~$1500 into storage, then I would think the Sandforce drives would be the best bet, since they seem to be the best at wear-leveling and preserving usable space. There is also this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233112

No RAID required, under your budget (barely), and I would assume that this is TRIM capable.