Sticking with RAID 0 smaller SSDs or a single larger one if the pricing is nearly identical?

gyroknight · November 30, 2015

I picked up two 500GB Samsung 850 EVOs for around $269 during Black Friday and put them in RAID 0 to get a total of 1 TB of storage space and I saw today that Amazon has the 1 TB version of $271 after shipping and other fees. Now, I've read up on the pros and cons of both cases. The RAID 0 setup gains read and write speed, but requires a slightly longer boot time for the RAID controller to initialize, can't update the firmware of the drives and use RAPID through Samsung Magician, and increases the points of failure (although from the reviews I've seen for the 850 EVOs, I'm not too worried about drive longevity) while the single drive sacrifices the read and write speed for all those other features. I've also heard that higher capacity SSDs can actually outperform a RAID 0 array because the SSD can write to more NAND chips in parallel, but I'm not sure if that was just applicable to earlier SSDs. However, the biggest disadvantage I could find about a RAID 0 setup compared to a single drive one was that the 2 SSDs required for the array combined cost more than a single high capacity SSD, but in this case the single drive actually turns out to be more expensive.

So given that both setups are nearly identical in price and returning the 500GB SSDs are not an issue, should I stick with my current RAID setup or return the two drives and replace it with one larger capacity drive? Are the speeds gained by RAPID actually comparable to the increases from RAID?

blu4 · November 30, 2015

Less parts- less chance of failure. A single SSD is enough for lighting fast OS operations and RAID 0 would benefit, but marginally.

Oshino Shinobu · November 30, 2015

Unless you're making large file transfers from the drive (to a drive that can keep up) all the time, you're not going to notice any difference in speed during everyday use.

I'd go for a single, high capacity drive, simply because it's a more versatile solution. You kind of get locked down with RAID0, as it can have issues transfering OS if you ever need to, as well as not being able to change system, as they'd need to be re-set up in RAID 0 on a new board. Having two SSDs RAID0 also theoretically doubles the chance of data loss, which is pretty bad, even fro reliable SSDs.

gyroknight · November 30, 2015

Thanks for all the feedback, but unfortunately, it seems the deal I found sold out and doesn't ship to the US, so I guess I'm stuck with two drives in RAID. Oh well.