RAIDING 2 SSDs

[happy]

Hi guys, so I debating whether I should get another Kingston 64GB SSD that is used. Well I am quite paranoid that when RAID 0 these 2 SSDs that TRIM will be unactivated. Is this true? What about the failure of one SSD? Is it common? What causes the failure? Leaving the computer on for long periods of time, which affects the SSD array? Should I just invest in a 120GB SSD instead? The only reason why I want to RAID 0 my current SSD is to salvage it instead of leave it sitting. Opinions are greatfully appreciated.

Thanks

[AthlonX2]

yes you lose trim in raid until RST 11.5 is out

[yogurt_21]

used + raid0 sounds like it'll have issues, might be right away, might be in 2 years+ but I just don't see the point on drives that are already less than half the speed of current ones.

save up and get a 120GB new drive. It'll be 50% faster than your raid on read, 200% faster on write, and have a far less probability to fail within the first 5 years.

[AthlonX2]

Stay away from Sandforce drives that do not use custom firmware

[TheOne]

Originally Posted by happy

Hi guys, so I debating whether I should get another Kingston 64GB SSD that is used. Well I am quite paranoid that when RAID 0 these 2 SSDs that TRIM will be unactivated. Is this true?

It is, TRIM currently can't be passed on a RAID, but Intel is working on a new driver to allow it. It should be noted though that most modern controllers support their own internal form of TRIM which can help keep SSD's in a RAID running efficiently.

Originally Posted by happy

What about the failure of one SSD? Is it common? What causes the failure?

The firmware of an SSD is usually responsible for any problems an SSD has, many controller manufacturers over the years have had to deal with issues in their firmware.

One of the more recent and largest spread firmware bugs was with drives using a SandForce SF-2281 controller, the firmware had a power management bug which was causing the drives to disconnect from the system while active causing the OS to crash, and requiring the user to do a hard shutdown and reboot.

SandForce released a firmware update back in October, after working on the issue for months, and were able to increase the stability of the drives for many users, they also just released another firmware update which is supposed to have many more fixes in it.

Unfortunately some users still have problems with SF-2281 drives, so purchasing one can be a gamble, but the odds of having issues have gone down quite a bit.

Originally Posted by happy

Leaving the computer on for long periods of time, which affects the SSD array? Should I just invest in a 120GB SSD instead? The only reason why I want to RAID 0 my current SSD is to salvage it instead of leave it sitting. Opinions are greatfully appreciated.

Thanks

I would purchase a new SATAIII 120/128GB SSD, their prices have really come down this past year.

Though I don't know where you live, here in the U.S. you can find good deals on SSD's at places like Newegg.com.

Some drives to consider.

Crucial M4 128GB - Newegg.com

Controller: Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $125

Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB - Newegg.com

Controller: SandForce SF-2281
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $130 ($100 after MIR)

OCZ Vertex 3 120GB - Newegg.com

Controller: SandForce SF-2281
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $135 ($125 after MIR)

OCZ Vertex 4 128GB - Newegg.com

Controller: Marvell 88SS9187 (Speculated) with a custom OCZ firmware
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $150

Intel 330 120GB - Newegg.com

Controller: SandForce SF-2281 with a custom Intel modified firmware
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $150

Intel 520 120GB - Newegg.com

Controller: SandForce SF-2281 with a custom Intel modified firmware
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $160

Corsair Force GT 120GB - Newegg.com

Controller: SandForce SF-2281
NAND: 25nm Synchronous
Price: $160 ($130 after MIR)

Samsung 830 128GB - Newegg.com

Controller: Samsung (uses 3 ARM Cores)
NAND: Samsung 2xnm Toggle
Price: $170

[AsRock]

Originally Posted by AthlonX2

yes you lose trim in raid until RST 11.5 is out

You mean the actual release. As i use 11.5 but it's beta in fact it might be even alpha.

[AthlonX2]

you also need the OROM in your bios i have the 11.5 orom but not using the drivers since i dont use RAID atm

[mauriek]

i have used SSD Raid 0 for almost couple of years, and Raid 0 of my mechanical drive since 2008, never have a single hardware fail on those RAID arrays while since 2008 i lost 1 RAM (PNY), 2 PSU (FSP) and 2 External backup harddrives (500GB Seagate and 1TB WD Green). 1 SCSI drives (36GB Seagate), and my PC is on 24/7 except for maintenance.

when you decide to RAID 0 any of your harddrive you need to have those backup mentality, think about how you going to have your backup and be consistent. and another important thing is that you must have a clean and stable power supply to power your drives, i have seen harddrives fails so often caused by Bad power supply, in my opinion harddrive is the most power sensitive piece of hardware.

now..about performance of SSD Raid 0 and single SSD, i havent notice a huge difference in common daily task (office work, gaming, browsing, etc), maybe because a single SSD already that fast, but yes you will get extra performance in some task. You loose TRIM so you need to regularly maintenance your SSD to keep its performance, internal garbage collection function of SSD is good enough but with TRIM it will work better.

from my experience, Marvel based chipset is better than sandforce chipset for SSD RAID array only single drive performance sandforce chipset is better. I'm unfamiliar with performance and durability of Kingston 64GB but i have couple of Kingston 30GB with Toshiba chipset as cache for my other drives.

[AthlonX2]

this is true,but it depends on what marvell based drive,some have more agressive firmware like that corsair performance 3 and pro

[M.Beier]

Originally Posted by AsRock

You mean the actual release. As i use 11.5 but it's beta in fact it might be even alpha.

The official release of final version, is what concern most.

[techtard]

Most modern SSDs also come with garbage collection built into their conrollers. So even if you do suffer some performance degredation, just idle your computer for ahwile and the GC will kick in.

I wouldn't mind buying a pcie sata 6 raid controller and Raiding up some cheap SSDs just to see what it's like.

[Aquinus]

I personally have two 120Gb Corsair Force GTs in RAID-0 on the SATA6 on the X79 PCH and for block sizes > 512k, I've seen 1gb/s reads and writes. I've seen no performance degradation since I upgraded my rig. I highly recommend it, it is very fast. You don't notice it in normal circumstances, but I copied an 8gb virtual machine and it copied at 500Mb/s (that's reading and writing to the same RAID.) 16 seconds and 8gb was copied. You can't complain about speeds like that.

[M.Beier]

Oh and to answer the poll...
My first RAID...2x 300GB DiamondMax 10+, one HDD died after 4 years.

[Sinzia]

Guess I'm lucky or something, but my raid 0+1 had a shit-ton of issues where my raid 0's have never ever died.