SSDs and Raid 0, worth the risk/hassle etc?

[wand3r3r]

I have a couple ocz vertex 3s and have been itching to turn them over to raid 0 and throw windows 8 on it.

This system consists of an
core i7 980 (6 core)
ASUS P6X58-E PRO
16 GB ddr3 1600
ocz vertex 3 120 gbx2
plus another ssd and raptor

1. Is it worth the risk/effort etc? Will it be reasonably faster loading windows, games, etc?

2. How often do Raid arrays just corrupt themselves? It's been a while since I've checked into it and apparently over time some people have complained about losing the raid somehow.

3. Does trim work currently, are there other drawbacks to be aware of?

I really like speed, but am not quite sure whether to venture into this. I typically reinstall windows on a annual/biannual basis just to clean up the system.

One more thing, I would have important data backed up elsewhere. I have plenty of drives/space so I would just use it for games / apps etc.

 

[el-Capitan]

1. Under normal circumstances you will not notice much of a difference, though you will shave off a few secs from your boot time and possibly the odd second from loading games. My motivation was to create one larger disk.
2. *knocks on wood* No experience. However, the info on the array is not important and I have set in my mind that i may lose all (I only have games installed).
3. Only on series 7 chipsets, so not on yours. Support for for earlier ones will prob not happen. I have had minimal degradation on my Vertex 3's, less than 10% in synthetic benches after 7months.

 

[Carson Dyle]

2. How often do Raid arrays just corrupt themselves? It's been a while since I've checked into it and apparently over time some people have complained about losing the raid somehow.
...
I really like speed, but am not quite sure whether to venture into this. I typically reinstall windows on a annual/biannual basis just to clean up the system.

I don't think this should be your greatest worry. You should worry about the fact that a two drive RAID 0 array has twice the probability of failure due to a single one of the drives failing. IMO, that probability is already high enough without compounding it intentionally.

 

[Fernando 1]

I don't think this should be your greatest worry. You should worry about the fact that a two drive RAID 0 array has twice the probability of failure due to a single one of the drives failing.

That is true, but the risk of a sudden death of one of the RAID members is much lower with SSDs than with HDDs, because SSDs don't have mechanical write and read heads, which may get broken or seized up.

 

[Zxian]

I honestly believe that people overestimate the benefit of TRIM on a modern system, especially when the drive is being used for the OS. How much writing do you do on a daily basis? Unless you're continuously writing data to the drive, you won't notice any change in your day to day performance with TRIM enabled or not. Almost all modern drives have sufficient garbage collection algorithms to account for the low writes that are seen on system drives.

As for performance gains, it's going to be rare that you'd actually notice the difference in performance between a single SSD and two in RAID0. As with el-Capitan, I have my drives in RAID0 for the convenience of a single volume.

RAID arrays don't simply corrupt themselves unless there's something else at fault. This is especially true with Intel controllers as of the past few years.

 

[hhhd1]

1. Is it worth the risk/effort etc? Will it be reasonably faster loading windows, games, etc?

No.

 

[qstorm]

I have an asrock z77 extreme4 and a pair of ocz vertex4 ssds.

So far the raid0 array I created with these 2 ssds has failed TWICE in a single month.... (lololol!). After each failure I have to deploy my OCZ bootable Toolbox CD (OCZ does not offer one with each ssd, you download a file from their site and built (burn) your Linux based bootable cd) and perform a secure erase on the ssd that HAS FAILED and is no more recognizable (ocz toolbox recognizes it).

SMART info is "stallar" for both drives. Apart from 6RAW read data errors (oddly, 6 for each of both drives, they must be twins or something), I have no relocated sectors and health is 100!.

First time I had the ssd failure I blamed the latest bios. I downgraded. Now I am trying again with latest bios (2.80). I have changed ssd cables... I keep crosses and garlic for vampires and ghosts.... I turn around myself three times each time I power on the computer but... to no avail.

Previously, I had an asus P658D mobo and a raid 0 consisting of 2 intel xm25 ssds.... almost 4 YEARS of NOT A SINGLE ERROR....

Asrock or Asus, the same intel family chipsets are behind the brand names.... asus had a 3Gb/sec intel chipset, asrock has a chipset with 2 6gb/sec sata ports and 4 3gb/sec sata ports. I connected the ssds to the HiSpeed (oh yeah) ports... not that I was blew away by the rushing wind... but it is always to know that you've built your system to the max... and then, while you are simply browsing... windows suddenly can't find anything, the earth behind windows' feet and BSOD... and then.... bios informs "RAID 0 FAILED".... 1 ssd not recognizable...

this is no damn software error.

either asrock or one of the ocz disks is defective... and I am no detective

 

[Fernando 1]

I have an asrock z77 extreme4 and a pair of ocz vertex4 ssds.
So far the raid0 array I created with these 2 ssds has failed TWICE in a single month.... (lololol!).

This behaviour is quite unusual for SSD RAID0 arrays.
I am running SSD RAID0 arrays on different systems since several years (2x160GB Intel Postville, 2x128GB Crucial M4 and 2x256GB Samsung 840 Pro) and did not have one single problem regarding the RAID configuration.

 

[UaVaj]

"3. Does trim work currently, are there other drawbacks to be aware of?"

didn't the latest intel driver addressed this issue.

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on the same boat too. z77 extreme4 w/ vertex4. have another brand new vertex4 on the shelf. obviously the benchmark is promising. as for actual real world performance? wondering if it is even worth it.

10sec of game loading vs 6 sec of game loading won't matter becuase most of the time - still waiting for friend computer to load.

 

[xeledon20005]

To be honest I think SSD's are the future, I have 2 samsung 840pro in a Raid 0 configuration, although you think you won't see a speed increase you really do in the long run. I notice the difference everyday when im suspending my virtual machines or uploading files to my network drive. you would be surprised what 1.2gb of read and 1gb of write can do.

 

[Makaveli]

I went Raid 0 with two intel G2 drives in december and I can't say I have any complaints. I do notice load times in games are faster than the single SSD. Overall windows usage feels bit snappier but I think this more due to a fresh install vs single SSD vs Raid.

My reasons for doing it were to boost capacity not for increased speed that was just an added bonus.

Currently no TRIM but i've not noticed the loss at all so far. My machine usually is on during the day and it has enough time to idle when i'm at work.

 

[HomerJS]

I went Raid 0 with two intel G2 drives in december and I can't say I have any complaints. I do notice load times in games are faster than the single SSD. Overall windows usage feels bit snappier but I think this more due to a fresh install vs single SSD vs Raid.

My reasons for doing it were to boost capacity not for increased speed that was just an added bonus.

Currently no TRIM but i've not noticed the loss at all so far. My machine usually is on during the day and it has enough time to idle when i'm at work.

I checked SSD RAID (2011) benchmarks on TH. In most cases performance gains for RAID 0 was 75-90%

 

[UaVaj]

I checked SSD RAID (2011) benchmarks on TH. In most cases performance gains for RAID 0 was 75-90%

for most of the members here on AT - the difference is moot. the difference between 10sec and 6sec loading time is moot. even 30sec and 18sec is moot.

exception is for the professional where time is money. in that case. no sdd is fast enough. even a dozen of ssd in raid 0 is not fast enough.

TH agrees with this too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-6.html

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only time to even consider raid 0 on ssd for the enthauasit user is. need more space. say need 256gb. instead of a single 256gb. raid 0 a pair of 128gb.

bonus is the added performance of raid.

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lastly if benchmark is your thing. no need for further discussion. you already made up your mind.

 

[Owls]

I have an asrock z77 extreme4 and a pair of ocz vertex4 ssds.

So far the raid0 array I created with these 2 ssds has failed TWICE in a single month.... (lololol!). After each failure I have to deploy my OCZ bootable Toolbox CD (OCZ does not offer one with each ssd, you download a file from their site and built (burn) your Linux based bootable cd) and perform a secure erase on the ssd that HAS FAILED and is no more recognizable (ocz toolbox recognizes it).

SMART info is "stallar" for both drives. Apart from 6RAW read data errors (oddly, 6 for each of both drives, they must be twins or something), I have no relocated sectors and health is 100!.

First time I had the ssd failure I blamed the latest bios. I downgraded. Now I am trying again with latest bios (2.80). I have changed ssd cables... I keep crosses and garlic for vampires and ghosts.... I turn around myself three times each time I power on the computer but... to no avail.

Previously, I had an asus P658D mobo and a raid 0 consisting of 2 intel xm25 ssds.... almost 4 YEARS of NOT A SINGLE ERROR....

Asrock or Asus, the same intel family chipsets are behind the brand names.... asus had a 3Gb/sec intel chipset, asrock has a chipset with 2 6gb/sec sata ports and 4 3gb/sec sata ports. I connected the ssds to the HiSpeed (oh yeah) ports... not that I was blew away by the rushing wind... but it is always to know that you've built your system to the max... and then, while you are simply browsing... windows suddenly can't find anything, the earth behind windows' feet and BSOD... and then.... bios informs "RAID 0 FAILED".... 1 ssd not recognizable...

this is no damn software error.

either asrock or one of the ocz disks is defective... and I am no detective

OCZ is crap. sorry, it's not the board.

 

[AdamK47]

I went RAID-0 with 6 of them. No problems after 2 months.

 

[sequoia464]

I have the OS on a couple of M4's (raid0) - all of my job specific programs and data on some Plextor M3's (raid0) - and do a couple of daily copies of all of my project data and docs to a set of raided Kingstons - these are the Toshiba based Kingston drives with the aggressive GC so I'm not too worried about all of the updates without trim.

Depends on your usage, but for me the raid setup is well worth the expense and potential failures. I also make sure to back up weekly to a regular HD.