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wtm9tails · ‎07-21-2014

Samsung 840 PRO SSD Install: RAPID vs RAID0?
I am upgrading my OCZ SSD's for New Samsung 840 PRO SSD's. I usually have run 2 x OCZ Vertex III 120GB SSD's in RAID0.
I was going to get 2 x Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD'sand install in a RAID0 configuration but then my friends said to get a single 840 PRO 256GB SSD and use the RAPID software and it would be faster,boot faster and perform better than in a RAID0 set-up.
Thanks everyone will be looking forward to all input and ideas,
Thanks all
Tiger

MB- Asus RIVE
OS - Windows 8.1 Pro
CPU - I7 3820 @ 4.4GHz
Cooling - Corsair H100i w/4 Fans Push Pull Set Up
Main Drives - 256 GB 0Raid w/2 x 128 GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
BkUp HD's - 2 x Seagate Baracuda 500GB HD
RAM - 32GB (8x4GB) G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2133
Graphics - 2xMSI N780 Lightning
Monitors - 2xAsus VS248H-P
Optic Drives - 2xLiteOn iHAS424
Tower - Thermaltake Armor Revo Snow

Seraphim85 · ‎07-21-2014

RAPID mode is a seamless integration of your system RAM into the storage driver stack by SAMSUNG. By seamless I mean that you cannot monitor, alter, measure or really effectively benchmark it's effects. To read about it check out http://www.samsung.com/fr/business-images/resource/case-study/2014/01/Whitepaper-Samsung-SSD-Rapid-M...

I do use it on my system as I do have an 256 GB 840 pro but I also do not have another SSD to check against RAID 0 with. The one drawback with RAID configs on SSD's is firmware upgrades. In a raid config the samsung magician software will not recognize the drives as EVO's. So that basically means the magician software is useless. I haven't even bothered to look if samsung provides a command line or boot utility to upgrade their firmware currently. Since purchase, not even a year ago, there have been two firmware upgrades on the 840 PRO.

My hunch is you would gain a significant bandwidth increase, assuming the raid controller itself doesn't bottleneck you. However unless you are running some intensive applications, multiple 4k video encodes for example, you won't see a difference outside of benchmarks. What you will lose out on is the over provisioning and RAPID functionality of the magician software. Over provisioning being the big one as it has shown to increase the mean time failure dramatically extending the longevity of the flash in the drive.

That's my two cents.

Menthol · ‎07-22-2014

Seraphim85, very good explanation you gave, so if you use the magician software to speed up your drive it is using system ram to do so, and as you say you have no way to limit the amount, it is constantly changing. For the most part I would guess to say that is fine if you have enough system memory available, 16, 32, 64 MB of memory. less than 16 GB and it may not be a good solution but I have not tested this theory

HiVizMan · ‎07-22-2014

I am a huge fan of Samsung and do recommend the RAPID route. How much memory will you have in your system by the way?

To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

Seraphim85 · ‎07-22-2014

Menthol RAPID mode is locked to 1GB of RAM. Unfortunately, even after numerous requests, Samsung has yet to give the option of increasing that. It's understandable why they would not want to hard code an increase in RAM usage as they have to engineer for the widest use case. I could just imagine the commentary if they doubled it, to 2GB, on 4GB systems. It would still be nice to allow end users to modify it though for those of us that have much more RAM than we need on a daily basis. I know my 32GB's isn't getting touched unless my test VM's are up and running and those are dynamically assigned resource in Hyper-V.

P.S. nicest thing about Win 8.1 pro is Hyper-V integration. So many uses even for non professional nerds.

wtm9tails · ‎07-23-2014

Thanks everyone for the input.I have 32GB (8x4GB) of G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2133(PC3-17000). I have never run anything but RAID0 set-ups on my rigs. All my buddies that turned me on to RAID set-ups are all now using the Samsung PRO Drives and tell me,"well I know your not going to believe this.Run the RAPID set-up over the RAID."
Well I'll be impatiently waiting for the UPS man to deliver my new drive in the morning and get it installed ASAP.

Time for Next project now. Going to do my first custom water cooling system. In the first 15 months since I built this rig I have replaced the Corsair H100i water cooling system 4 times now. I am on my 5th H100i system now. Leaky Radiators x 2, Bad Pumps x 1 and Bricked Firmware x 1.
Been looking at XSPC systems and if anyone has any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated and will be installing in a Cooler Master HAF X Tower.
Thanks Again all,
Tiger

MB- Asus RIVE
OS - Windows 8.1 Pro
CPU - I7 3820 @ 4.4GHz
Cooling - Corsair H100i w/4 Fans Push Pull Set Up
Main Drives - 256 GB 0Raid w/2 x 128 GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
BkUp HD's - 2 x Seagate Baracuda 500GB HD
RAM - 32GB (8x4GB) G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2133
Graphics - 2xMSI N780 Lightning
Monitors - 2xAsus VS248H-P
Optic Drives - 2xLiteOn iHAS424
Tower - Thermaltake Armor Revo Snow

HiVizMan · ‎07-23-2014

Please post back how it feels for you. I do not have any value in the SSD benchmarks by the way simply because they measure things we do not really use in real world. So I trust feel more than I do those artificial numbers.

To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

Fernando_11 · ‎07-23-2014

Recently I have done some benchmark tests with my Z97 system comparing
a) 2x256 GB Samsung 840 PRO as RAID0 with
b) 1x512 GB Samsung 840 PRO running in AHCI mode with/without Magician 4.4 RAPID.

Here are the results:
1. RAID0 configuration:

2. AHCI configuration without RAPID mode:

3. AHCI configuration with enabled RAPID mode:

By the way:
The Samsung Magician RAPID mode generally uses not more than 25% of the on-board memory
Since v4.4 the Magician tool is able to support up to 16 GB memory and will use up to 4GB) (=25%) for data caching. Magician v4.3 had a limit of 1GB.

My current System:
MB: ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Prof. Gaming i7, CPU: Intel Core i5 6600K, Disk Drives: 250 GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD + 1 TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD, Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 530, OS: Win10 Pro x64

rlandersen · ‎04-03-2015

Hi, I am planning on upgrading my boot drive from an old 120GB Corsair Force GT SSD.

After this discussion what would you recommend:
1) 2 x 256GB Samsung 850 Pro in RAID0
2) 1 x 512GB Samsung 850 Pro using RAPID
3) Another suggestion.

Thank you guys.