Is it worth buying SSDs for a RAID?

Im seeing people using SSDs for RAID-0 and getting excellent improvements in read/write rates.

But now there is a good opportunity to acquire another SSD Force Corsair F60 identical to mine. I'm thinking of buying another and bind the two to RAID-0.

Is it worth it? I'm getting about 285MB/s of reading rate, the system boots within seconds, applications explode on the screen without choking.

Will I gain even more performance or should I just increase my system and applications space from 60 to 120GB? (which would be great, I could have several games installed in addition to programs)

I also read that this SSD is ideal for leaving AHCI enabled on the mainboard, so I left it. But if put it into RAID, will I lose this feature? It has the options "IDE", "AHCI", "RAID / XHD". Or does that even have anything to do with it?

Diogo

Posted 2011-05-13T19:04:04.217

Reputation: 28 202

Kind of a very subjective topic. If you need the space or not, that's not a question anybody here except for you can answer. – slhck – 2011-05-13T19:14:25.137

What i want to know is if worth RAID 0 on 2 SSDs or 2 SSDs without any RAID operation each one alone (considering both are using TRIM and they will lose it if i RAID them). – Diogo – 2011-05-13T19:20:08.227

I wouldn't use them in a RAID0. SSDs as a class of product still have an unusually high failure rate, with many lasting less than a year. As a RAID5 set up, maybe, but that pumps up the cost. – BBlake – 2011-05-13T19:47:58.890

1Let's flip the question around a bit. Are you (or your user base) happy with the speed of your apps or are you unhappy? It's very tempting to want the latest/greatest/fastest device, but is it really necessary? – Xenoactive – 2011-05-13T20:00:17.817

Thats the point, will i get the same improvement that a RAID 0 have on HDDs doing RAID 0 on my SSDs??? If yes i say it is really necessary... – Diogo – 2011-05-13T20:13:01.410

possible duplicate of SSD: To RAID or not to RAID? and One large or two smaller SSDs?

– sblair – 2011-05-15T01:39:45.690

@diogo By "improvements in read/write", RAID 0 would tend to improve sequential read/write speeds a lot, and somewhat improve random read/write speeds. It's the random speeds that give SSDs their punch, vs HDDs. But it's also random writes that would suffer in the long term without TRIM. I think that RAIDing SSDs is optimising the wrong thing. – sblair – 2011-05-15T01:44:00.807

@diogo Also, when you say "boots within seconds", when do you start counting? When the Windows logo first appears? I'd say the same thing for my single SSD. Some motherboards can take longer to boot in RAID mode than AHCI mode, due to additional checks. – sblair – 2011-05-15T02:07:20.380

Answers

RAID 0 should get you faster reads and writes, but you do you really need that? Note that if you lose one drive of a RAID 0 pair, you just lost the volume, where with with two drives operating independently, you've still got the data on the good drive.

Also, note that without special driver support, you'll be giving up TRIM support on the array.

I think RAID implies AHCI, on Intel boards at least.

Mark Johnson

Posted 2011-05-13T19:04:04.217

Reputation: 2 561

"you've still got the data on the good drive", true that, but only in 50% of all cases :) – slhck – 2011-05-13T19:35:11.477

@slhck - "where with with two drives operating independently, you've still got the data on the good drive." -- He was reiterating that with the two drives independently you would have data on the good drive. – paradd0x – 2011-05-13T20:24:46.733

@Thiago Oooh.. I read that as "whereas", but makes sense on a second thought. – slhck – 2011-05-13T20:26:21.133

I found this article to be a better summation which essentially matches my experience with SSD: excellent performance, high failure rate, all failures are catastrophic.

For my money, I'm avoiding them from now on until they're a little more reliable. I don't have that kind of disposable income. I would certainly not consider using them in RAID-0 unless a) I was not planning on storing any data on the computer and b) I was not planning on using the system for any critical functions.

Bacon Bits

Posted 2011-05-13T19:04:04.217

Reputation: 6 125

I'm assuming that this is motherboard RAID? If it is, I would stick with just a single drive. The RAID controller on a motherboard works, but tend to be the lowest quality RAID controllers. For most home users it's not worth it since you really won't see any improvement over what you have right now. I'd save your money and get bigger capacity drives if you want more space.

That doesn't mean SSD RAID's don't have a proper use. Whenever you need high performance hard drive access times, like on a web server or video rendering studios, SSD RAIDs are appropriate.

So unless you are working on high performance business class computers, stick with what you got.

Hope this helps

Doltknuckle

Posted 2011-05-13T19:04:04.217

Reputation: 5 813

With the right controller that has trim support, you can, but SSD drives fail fairly regularly so you really want to go with a raid solution that offers redundancy

Will Gunn

Posted 2011-05-13T19:04:04.217

Reputation: 370

TRIM support in the SSD controller is irrelevant; SSDs in RAID 0 will not receive the TRIM command.

– sblair – 2011-05-27T20:18:54.843

Raid controller not SSD controller. Also the more recent intel chipsets support SSD Raid with TRIM http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/03/23/intel-releases-trim-for-raid/1

– Will Gunn – 2011-05-27T22:00:40.163

That's not correct - that bit-tech article is wrong, as can be seen from the comments. If the SSDs are in RAID, they won't receive TRIM commands. But if the SSDs are connected as single drives to an appropriate controller which is in RAID mode, they will get TRIMed (even if other drives are in RAID).

– sblair – 2011-05-27T22:12:31.273

Duly noted blair. – Will Gunn – 2011-05-27T22:24:02.307