Vortex II 2x 240GB SSD RAID question

[KrisDouglas]

Hello,

I have a quick question about running RAID 0 on two 240GB SSDs. I am going to be purchasing this machine (Vortex II 17") in a couple of days (at the most) and I was wondering if two Kingston HYPER-X SSDs would work well together.

I know hard drives are supposedly less reliable, and I have a couple of machines that have RAID0 without issue. Just thought it would be worth asking.

 

[Rakk]

Just as a question, why on earth would you need to raid two SSD's, they are very fast already, they don't need help to be fast
It'd be a very expensive 240GB of HDD space

 

[KrisDouglas]

I wasn't planning to mirror them, a RAID0 creates one container. The reason for this is the requirement to be able to work from one drive.

Again, it's not a killer point to me, just thought it would be an interesting moot point.

 

[Rakk]

Yeah, sometimes I get confused over which RAID's provide how much space (compared to size of disks)

I can't see any reason why you couldn't raid those two SSD's (given theyre the same), but what do you need so much SSD space for all on 'one' drive just out of curiosity, others may be able to tell you how to get round needing it on one drive if thats possible.

 

[AndyL]

Raid 0 is pointless with SSD's (especially SATA3 SSD's) as you will be saving only 10ths of milliseconds of loading and writing times (you will not be able to tell any difference between a system with just 1 SATA3 SSD and a system with 2 SATA3 SSD's in Raid 0 apart from the fact that one will boot quicker by a couple of seconds! It is a complete waste of money.

 

[Rakk]

It is a complete waste of money.

Yeah, thats what I thought as well, though he said he was RAIDing it to get it all as one drive rather than 2 seperate ones, so I don't think it's been picked to speed things up, cos yes, extra speed not needed for SSD's.

 

[KrisDouglas]

Raid 0 is pointless with SSD's (especially SATA3 SSD's) as you will be saving only 10ths of milliseconds of loading and writing times (you will not be able to tell any difference between a system with just 1 SATA3 SSD and a system with 2 SATA3 SSD's in Raid 0 apart from the fact that one will boot quicker by a couple of seconds! It is a complete waste of money.

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of RAID 0, I believe you are confusing with RAID1 which mirrors r/w onto 2 disks simultaneously. RAID0 is one large container across 2 drives.

I have however made the decision not to bother

 

[Grimble]

Raid Speeds

RAID0 is typically used to get more speed - in a 2 disk RAID0, you have two controllers, and with spinning discs two sets of heads reading and writing information. It also loses no space, as there is no redundancy.

RAID1 is typically used for data protection - If one disc fails, you can still operate fine. There is an additional advantage that read speeds on spinning discs are faster in RAID1 (Than a single disc, not RAID0), as you have two discs reading at a time (EDIT: should mention that writes are slower as every block is written to each disk). It's usually beaten by RAID0 for speed though.

With two discs, that's pretty much your only two options, anything else (RAID1+0, 0+1, 4, 5, 6, Z) all need at least 3 discs.

 

[Music Guy123]

Yes the above is correct. Another advantage of RAID 0 is that you don't have to deal with two drives, some people don't like to choose a drive to write something to, they just prefer to have one 'block' to write everything to.

 

[AndyL]

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of RAID 0, I believe you are confusing with RAID1 which mirrors r/w onto 2 disks simultaneously. RAID0 is one large container across 2 drives.

I have however made the decision not to bother

I think you have misunderstood the meaning of RAID 0!
RAID 0 is normally used to gain speed.

Yes the above is correct. Another advantage of RAID 0 is that you don't have to deal with two drives, some people don't like to choose a drive to write something to, they just prefer to have one 'block' to write everything to.

True, however it is a bad way of achieving a sigle disk solution as RAID configs can be unstable (i.e. less reliable than non RAID configs). It would make more sense to just buy a bigger single SSD.