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SSD, Harddrives and RAID?

ApplesDaMan
Level 7
So I was thinking about RAID and I did study a little about personal computers but I don't remember this very well and many online sources have some confusing information about this...

2x Crucial m4 256GB (SSD) (X, Y)
2x Western Digital Green 2TB (HDD) (Z, V)

Now, I've heard about different RAID modes and was wondering what is the suggested for these? (In the same build)

Also, how do I change the RAID on them?

X will run my OS
Y will run my Games + Adobe Suite
Z will run Entertainment
V will run Other Applications

If this isn't a suggested way to set up what to have in the HDD/SSD please tell me what's a better way to do 🙂
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Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Most common RAID setups take two drives and either, makes one drive out of the two with double the size of one disk.....Raid 0 or makes an exact copy of one drive on the other RAID 1 (there are other RAIDs)

If you wanted to RAID two SSDs x and y they would not be independant you would have to use the one RAID array for OS and Games Adobe etc. At the same time you set this SSD raid up you could set up the HDD raid and put storage on that.

http://rog.asus.com/77402012/rampage-iv-motherboards/what-is-raid-setup-guide/ 🙂

The simplest setup would be this:

2x SSDS in RAID 0 for pure speed (this will give you ONE logical drive in the OS @ 512GB) Store your OS, Games on this drive



You have 2 options for the other drives, but I would recommend RAID1 since you will already have a RAID0 with SSDs for performance: (Store large files, media, programs that dont need fast read/writes on this array).

2x 2TB in RAID 1 for mirroring. You will still only see one logical drive in the OS, and you will only be able to utilize 2TB, not all 4 since they are mirroring.

2x 2TB in RAID 0 for speed giving you a total a 4TB logical drive in the OS.



Always remember:

RAID0 will give you faster speed and more capacity, BUT IS NOT FAULT tolerant. If you lose a drive, you're screwed and have to rebuild.

RAID1 will give you more redundancy and less capacity, it is fault tolerant, as in if you lose one drive, you can still retrieve your data.
i7-3820 @ 5.0Ghz - RIVF - 32GB Kingston @1866 - Gigabyte Radeon 7970 x2 - Cosair Force GT 240GB x2 (RAID 0) - WD 2TB 7200 (RAID 1)

HiVizMan
Level 40
RAID 0 is so tempting for the OS - I have done so as have many many others. And I hope unlike many others (but this I doubt) I have had a hard drive go down on me. And I lost all my work, two weeks between back ups and that meant a whole heap of time and effort went down the toilet. Nett result is that I am not a fan of a stripped array. (RAID 0) The gains in speed are so marginal in the real world when you go SSD any way that I do not see the point any longer.

But hey I am very grey in the beard and like to keep my work where I can access it, you go for the speed option if you are willing to take the risk. 😄
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

RAID 0 is just luck in general. If you're going to do it, don't put anything that you can't absolutely lose. I have noticed pretty decent gains in speeds with RAID 0 on SSDs, but its nothing mind blowing. (Plus you lose the TRIM feature)

I only mention RAID 0 because he actually has 2 SSDs, having two is a waste for RAID1 for the cost of SSDs. I supposed he could just have a JBOD between the two.

Another option, although expensive, would be RAID5 for 3xSSDs. Gain a little bit best of both worlds: Speed + Redundancy.
i7-3820 @ 5.0Ghz - RIVF - 32GB Kingston @1866 - Gigabyte Radeon 7970 x2 - Cosair Force GT 240GB x2 (RAID 0) - WD 2TB 7200 (RAID 1)

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
RAID 0 for SSDs is great for benchmarks but not noticable in everyday performance. If you go for it you need aggressive garbage collection from your controller and need to allow that to run in order to make up for the loss of TRIM. If you do lots of writes you will soon see a drop in performance without TRIM.

Future driver releases are supposed to bring TRIM to RAID SSD I'll wait for that. At the moment RSTe drivers are slowing performance compared to Microsoft AHCI!