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Two Intel X-25M 80Gb in RAID0 or one X-25M 160GB ?

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I am going to go SSD soon, and through work I can get Intel SSDs on the (very) cheap.

I am currently thinking whether I should get a single 160GB drive (245$), or a pair of 80GB drives (280$) and RAID0 them.

I'll be running this setup on my X58 under Win7 Pro 64-bit.

Any input you guys can give me so as to sway me one way or the other ? The price difference between the two options is quite meaningless to me and I have tons of free SATA ports (currently 9) and a huge case, so one more drive doesn't really matter.

Does TRIM work on a RAID0 setup ?
 
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I am going to go SSD soon, and through work I can get Intel SSDs on the (very) cheap.

I am currently thinking whether I should get a single 160GB drive (245$), or a pair of 80GB drives (280$) and RAID0 them.

I'll be running this setup on my X58 under Win7 Pro 64-bit.

Any input you guys can give me so as to sway me one way or the other ? The price difference between the two options is quite meaningless to me and I have tons of free SATA ports (currently 9) and a huge case, so one more drive doesn't really matter.

Does TRIM work on a RAID0 setup ?

No TRIM on RAID (...yet). I'd go with a single 160GB because of simplicity and the lack of TRIM. It will also hold a higher resale value if/when you upgrade. The two 80GB would be faster though, but in real world use, I'd doubt if you'd know the difference. BTW, wanna hook me up with that fine deal ya got there? lol
 
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No TRIM on RAID (...yet). I'd go with a single 160GB because of simplicity and the lack of TRIM. It will also hold a higher resale value if/when you upgrade. The two 80GB would be faster though, but in real world use, I'd doubt if you'd know the difference. BTW, wanna hook me up with that fine deal ya got there? lol

Didn't Intel add TRIM support for RAID0 and RAID1 in their drivers back in March ? I found a few places stating something to that effect today.

Can't hook anyone up but family members with the deal, it is for employees and family only and I cannot resell anything I buy through work.
 

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intel did add TRIM support in RAID, but only on their RAID controllers (its not on the SSD side)

you're on x58, so it should actually work.
 
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intel did add TRIM support in RAID, but only on their RAID controllers (its not on the SSD side)

you're on x58, so it should actually work.

Hmm. I'll have to google up some evidence of people getting it to work. I am actually not very bothered with resell value, since I have at least two more systems that could benefit from a SSD "handed down" to them.
 
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I haven't seen any documentation that the ICH10R, or any other mobo based SATA chip, passes TRIM commands to a RAID array. But it's hard finding any valid information, just lots of forums posts all over the place with people stating opinions without any facts.
 
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Intel added the ability to run single SSD drives with TRIM support while a controller is running in RAID mode (not to allow TRIM commands to be passed to an SSD RAID). For example, my SB750 is running in RAID mode with 2x HDD in RAID, and an HD/Blu/DVD ROM drive on its own. With an Intel Southbridge, one could add a single SSD to a controller in RAID mode and still have TRIM support.

In my case, I would probably have to switch back to AHCI mode or forgo TRIM support (even with a single SSD), although I'm not sure on what AMDs drivers can handle. It would probably work with Linux Kernel 2.6.34, but I doubt it would work with Windows 7 atm.
 

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Since this is your first SSD and you're the kind of guy who likes experimenting, I would recommend that you get 2x 80GB X-25Ms so you can experiment with RAID0 without TRIM, and if thats no good you can equip 2 of your rigs with SSDs.

Anand wrote a review a few months back comparing 2x X-25Vs versus a X-25M, and while its not directly applicable to your situation, his tests showed that you do gain 1.8x-1.9x random/sequential reads and writes with the drives in RAID0 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3618/intel-x25v-in-raid0-faster-than-x25m-g2-for-250/2).

Also, he showed that by using a smaller partition (lets say using 120GB of the available 2x80GB), you can delay and reduce the degradation you will experience due to no TRIM (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3618/intel-x25v-in-raid0-faster-than-x25m-g2-for-250/6). Hopefully this means that dinosaurs like myself who still use Win XP can still benefit from SSDs!

The same review shows that a 160GB X-25M will net you 259MB/s sequential reads. But why settle for that when you can potentially get 486MB/s in RAID0?

I know you will make the right decision :)
 
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