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SSD + Cache SSD?

105tommy105

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Would having an SSD boot drive then adding a Cache SSD give any performance boost? Or would it be better to buy a normal SSD and RAID?

Thanks
 
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Would not do you any good, would be better invested in getting a single larger SSD or 2 smaller ones and raiding them together. a SSD cache only works the way intended when you pair it with a normal hard drive
 

105tommy105

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Would not do you any good, would be better invested in getting a single larger SSD or 2 smaller ones and raiding them together. a SSD cache only works the way intended when you pair it with a normal hard drive

Okay thanks, Could you tell me why people wont raid because they want to keep rimm? what's the advantage?
 
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Well if you raid 2 smaller drives together you get increased performance (if your doing raid 0)
if you dont raid them together you still get the capacity but a less likely chance to loose all your data should something go wrong (corrupted operating system, drive failure etc.) that kind of set up would be more comparable to a JBOD setup. if your doing raid 1, you would be mirroring all the data across 2 drives, sacrificing a small amount of performance over the rated performance of a single drive but gaining data redundancy in the process. its honestly up to you to decide what setup is best. in theory SSD's SHOULD be more durable than mechanical drives and in essance last longer but with them being just as complex as traditional drives there is more than one point of failure a SSD can encounter such as a controller failure. SSD's just have not been on the market long enough to show long term usage numbers, it really is a roll of the dice at that point.

if i were you i would have the exact same setup as i have now, 2 small SSD's in raid for the performance and 2 traditional drives in raid 1 for data redundancy, store all your games, OS whatever isn't so important on the SSD's and everything that does matter store on the traditional drives since the avrage life span of a normal hard drive is estimated at roughly 5 - 10 years (if well kept) you have a better idea of when the point of failure SHOULD occur. then again its all luck of the draw on that, but thats what RAID 1 is for :)

hope this explains a bit more clearly

EDIT: just to give you an idea of how much luck of the draw plays a factor, my brand new samsung raid setup 2x 640GB spinpoints only lasted for 4 months. i had a drive failure on one of the drives and had to do an RMA, luckily Samsung has one of the best RMA departments in the business and i got my new drive within a week of filing the RMA
 
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105tommy105

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Well if you raid 2 smaller drives together you get increased performance (if your doing raid 0)
if you dont raid them together you still get the capacity but a less likely chance to loose all your data should something go wrong (corrupted operating system, drive failure etc.) that kind of set up would be more comparable to a JBOD setup. if your doing raid 1, you would be mirroring all the data across 2 drives, sacrificing a small amount of performance over the rated performance of a single drive but gaining data redundancy in the process. its honestly up to you to decide what setup is best. in theory SSD's SHOULD be more durable than mechanical drives and in essance last longer but with them being just as complex as traditional drives there is more than one point of failure a SSD can encounter such as a controller failure. SSD's just have not been on the market long enough to show long term usage numbers, it really is a roll of the dice at that point.

if i were you i would have the exact same setup as i have now, 2 small SSD's in raid for the performance and 2 traditional drives in raid 1 for data redundancy, store all your games, OS whatever isn't so important on the SSD's and everything that does matter store on the traditional drives since the avrage life span of a normal hard drive is estimated at roughly 5 - 10 years (if well kept) you have a better idea of when the point of failure SHOULD occur. then again its all luck of the draw on that, but thats what RAID 1 is for :)

hope this explains a bit more clearly

EDIT: just to give you an idea of how much luck of the draw plays a factor, my brand new samsung raid setup 2x 640GB spinpoints only lasted for 4 months. i had a drive failure on one of the drives and had to do an RMA, luckily Samsung has one of the best RMA departments in the business and i got my new drive within a week of filing the RMA

Yes Thank you so much for your help, I am going to add another Corsair 120 or 256 SSD :)
 
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Okay thanks, Could you tell me why people wont raid because they want to keep rimm? what's the advantage?

The feature people want to keep by not using RAID with SSDs is trim. As you use an SSD it will slow down without trim - it's a lot to explain so I'll link you to a good article on trim on anandtech here.

No RAID controllers currently support the ability to use Trim on SSDs in a RAID array. To be honest SSDs are fast enough when not RAIDed (coming from someone who went from 2xSSDs in a RAID to a single, larger SSD on its own as my OS drive). I did have some automatic cleanup of the drives (they essentially performed what trim does to themselves) but it never seemed to work as well as if I had got actual Trim working on them.
 

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I have never had trim working on my Intel SSD's ( except to test when i 1st had them ) as they have been in raided since near day one and still work just as well..

Heard so many people having issue's with other brands i would not raid them even more so at todays SSD speeds.

Hopefully Intel will release the version 11 raid drivers this year which is said to have trim even when SSD's are raided how ever don't hold your breath for that though.

Theirs intels Smart Response Technology which uses a HDD and a SSD as cache but never tried it my self.
 
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Yes Thank you so much for your help, I am going to add another Corsair 120 or 256 SSD :)

If your adding another to what you currently have make sure to use the exact same model number other wise you might run into stuttering issues when running them in raid 0

The feature people want to keep by not using RAID with SSDs is trim. As you use an SSD it will slow down without trim - it's a lot to explain so I'll link you to a good article on trim on anandtech here.

No RAID controllers currently support the ability to use Trim on SSDs in a RAID array. To be honest SSDs are fast enough when not RAIDed (coming from someone who went from 2xSSDs in a RAID to a single, larger SSD on its own as my OS drive). I did have some automatic cleanup of the drives (they essentially performed what trim does to themselves) but it never seemed to work as well as if I had got actual Trim working on them.

Most modern (if not all) SSD's come with very good Garbage collection wich works just fine in raid, leave your computer on and idling once every week over night and you'll be golden, have not lost a single performance number on my SSD's since day 1 of raiding them together. i've had the setup running for roughly 8 months now
 
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Most modern (if not all) SSD's come with very good Garbage collection wich works just fine in raid, leave your computer on and idling once every week over night and you'll be golden, have not lost a single performance number on my SSD's since day 1 of raiding them together. i've had the setup running for roughly 8 months now

Garbage collection may have got better since I got my Vertex 1 SSDs which it didnt work great on, but I'd still rather have my SSD in a state where I know any old data has been cleared up then have to leave it turned on but idle for an indeterminate amount of time. Of course it all depends on how often you're deleting and adding files to your SSD - if you will put your OS on and a couple of games and applications and then not do much to it then there isn't much to clear up in the first place.
 
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Garbage collection may have got better since I got my Vertex 1 SSDs which it didnt work great on, but I'd still rather have my SSD in a state where I know any old data has been cleared up then have to leave it turned on but idle for an indeterminate amount of time. Of course it all depends on how often you're deleting and adding files to your SSD - if you will put your OS on and a couple of games and applications and then not do much to it then there isn't much to clear up in the first place.

I have Vertex 2's and delete stuff all the time off of them, in fact i use them just like normal hard drives. i constantly install and remove/delete stuff off of them and they still have the same performance as day 1 :)
 
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