SSD storage questions.

[Leonofhyjal]

Hi guys, I need some help on what ssds I should get to replace my old Intel ones. I use them for my is and games only. Nothing I can't just reinstalled overnight. Price for me isn't much of an issue however I don't want to pay 1000 bucks for a 1 tb ssd. I'd much rather have more drives (about 1tb total) to make it easier to fix if one eventually dies. What brand would you recommend? I've heard a lot of good stuff about the Samsung 840 evo. The only brand I will never buy is OCZ... I got 3 dos vertex 3s back in the early days.

I don't really care if they are the fastest things around, just that they are reliable and have low degradation over 3-4 years. I've got an old lsi 512m 8 port something that I'll use if I need more then 2 drives, damn Asus board only has 2 6g port lol. Ideally I'd like to run 4 ssds raid 0, with my 4 hdds in raid 0.

Second question: what stripe size should I use? I've used everything from 8kb to 128kb and had problems with all of them. However that's probably because my current Intel ssds are old as hell, x 25 or something like that. Again its for os and games like WoW, steam games, and a bit of PhotoShop/aftereffects.

Thanks guys for reading all of that. You are the best tech community out there.

[PassionFruit]

I'd recommend the mentioned Samsung SSDs, very reliable and fast. I had a 250GB one myself.

[DIV1D3]

Yeh the 840 EVOs are really nice, if you get 4 250GB EVOs than it'll cost ya ~560 AUD so about 500 USD. 

Oops lol, seems like I'm dumb and it's 640 USD for 4 250GB Samsung 840 EVOs, did some stupid calculation. 

Edit: It might also be worth noting you might be better off only putting 2 500GB EVOs in RAID or if you want you could save a lots of moneys and just get a 1TB for $550. 

[WoodenMarker]

You can't really go wrong with the 840 Evo.

Why so many drives in raid 0?

[JohnnyGrey]

Why would you want to Raid-0 four SSD's? My previous generation 830 Series SSD hits ~430 MB/s Sequential write and ~545 MB/s read, along with amazing random reads/writes. The leap from a mechanical boot drive to an SSD is huge, the jump from an SSD to raid 0 SSD doesn't seem worth it for me. I'd rather buy one larger SSD, or just keep the second one as a different drive letter.

 

Also, you want to make it easier to fix if one dies. With a raid 0, if one dies, you lose the whole array, requiring you to reinstall anyways.

[TheProfosist]

You can't really go wrong with the 840 Evo.

Why so many drives in raid 0?

I would get a 840 evo for raid 0 as there is a good chance youll only get performance close to putting 840's in raid 0

[Leonofhyjal]

Wow you guys reply fast, only had time to cook burgers and I have replies lol.

I know that if I lose a drive I lose everything, just that its less money to spend on another drive to replace the dead one. I want 4 drives because I I'm ocd about filling a drive. I prefer to keep about 15% free if I ever need it. And doing that over 4 different letter drives = more ocd space waste lol.

how well do 4 evos in raid 0 scale anyways? I know that some ssds, even just 2 in raid 0 actually get slower.

[WoodenMarker]

I would get a 840 evo for raid 0 as there is a good chance youll only get performance close to putting 840's in raid 0

?

Wow you guys reply fast, only had time to cook burgers and I have replies lol.

I know that if I lose a drive I lose everything, just that its less money to spend on another drive to replace the dead one. I want 4 drives because I I'm ocd about filling a drive. I prefer to keep about 15% free if I ever need it. And doing that over 4 different letter drives = more ocd space waste lol.

how well do 4 evos in raid 0 scale anyways? I know that some ssds, even just 2 in raid 0 actually get slower.

Depends on what you're doing in terms of practical speed. What makes a ssd feel fast and snappy is the random read speed and random access times. Raid 0 increases sequential transfer speeds and won't make things feel faster except for when you're moving large files around all day. 

Unless you need a 4TB ssd or you're working with some crazy large files, I don't see the point in the raid.

[Leonofhyjal]

?

Depends on what you're doing in terms of practical speed. What makes a ssd feel fast and snappy is the random read speed and random access times. Raid 0 increases sequential transfer speeds and won't make things feel faster except for when you're moving large files around all day.

Unless you need a 4TB ssd or you're working with some crazy large files, I don't see the point in the raid.

Hmm I see your point, maybe I'll get 2 500g drives then. Plus then I don't need to dig out my raid card. It's just silly for Asus to only have 2 6g says ports on the Intel chipset... Premium WS board means at least 4 imo. But at least its better then my old g1 assassin 1366 board lol. It had terrible pcie interference with my sound card.

[Leonofhyjal]

What's the different between the Samsung 3-core MEX controller and Samsung MDX? If there is any difference that matters that is.

[TheProfosist]

Wow you guys reply fast, only had time to cook burgers and I have replies lol.

I know that if I lose a drive I lose everything, just that its less money to spend on another drive to replace the dead one. I want 4 drives because I I'm ocd about filling a drive. I prefer to keep about 15% free if I ever need it. And doing that over 4 different letter drives = more ocd space waste lol.

how well do 4 evos in raid 0 scale anyways? I know that some ssds, even just 2 in raid 0 actually get slower.

Well you would need a hardware raid controller for 4 as you dont even get the full speed with 3 if I recall correctly. Also I wouldnt raid 840 EVOs there are not really meant to be. In that price range you would be better with a crucial m500 for raid. I would provably go to a 840 evo or if you dont want samsung plextor and sandisk's top drives.

[TheProfosist]

What's the different between the Samsung 3-core MEX controller and Samsung MDX? If there is any difference that matters that is.

Which drives are those respectively in? If I know that I should be able to tell you.

[Leonofhyjal]

The Samsung 3 core is on the evo mz something 1 tb. The MDX is on the evo 500g. Just wondering because the 2 drives on newegg are very close in price despite the 500g difference in size.

[TheProfosist]

The Samsung 3 core is on the evo mz something 1 tb. The MDX is on the evo 500g. Just wondering because the 2 drives on newegg are very close in price despite the 500g difference in size.

Oh so 1tb 840 EVO vs 512gb 840 Pro? The pro's controller is better and it doesnt use "tricks" like the one in the evo. The evo's controller is a step up from the one in the standard 840 though. The pro also has mlc flash vs tlc in the evo, mlc is better for a number of reasons but tlc is cheaper which is why its in their cost oriented drive. This is also why "tricks" are used to keep the performance up close to the pro is a good number of situations rather than just raw performance.

[Leonofhyjal]

Oh so 1tb 840 EVO vs 512gb 840 Pro? The pro's controller is better and it doesnt use "tricks" like the one in the evo. The evo's controller is a step up from the one in the standard 840 though. The pro also has mlc flash vs tlc in the evo, mlc is better for a number of reasons but tlc is cheaper which is why its in their cost oriented drive. This is also why "tricks" are used to keep the performance up close to the pro is a good number of situations rather than just raw performance.

are these tricks you speak of going to effect reliability? As far as the speed between the 2 they look about the same so leaning towards the 1tb. Or would getting 2 500gs really be worth it?

[TheProfosist]

are these tricks you speak of going to effect reliability? As far as the speed between the 2 they look about the same so leaning towards the 1tb. Or would getting 2 500gs really be worth it?

Yes turbo write will reduce the logevity of the drive as it uses a tlc as slc so essentially 3 writes for 1but tlc has inherently less life span than mlc. I think it might even be a order of 10 less. But no shouldnt effect reliability just longevity. What the heck do you need 1tb of ssd space for, heck I still ask myself why I need 480gb/500gb.

[Leonofhyjal]

Ah thanks for that advise guys. I don't really need 1tb lol, I just want to be sure I have more then enough space for the next 3-4 years. I'm not a big fan of hard drives. Even as mass storage. I don't like having 2 different speed devices for storage. Not to mention I have very bad luck with hdd lifespan.

I'll go ahead with the 2 pro drives.

Side note: has anyone else had problems with Intel 320 series? My friend is running 2 80g drives in raid 0. He keeps having slow downs in windows 7 64 then he just reinstalls windows every 3-4 months to fix it. I've checked his PC and there aren't any viruses or anything like that. His startup times are over 3 minutes, same with shutdown. His restart times are the only thing that's about the speed that it should be.

[TheProfosist]

Ah thanks for that advise guys. I don't really need 1tb lol, I just want to be sure I have more then enough space for the next 3-4 years. I'm not a big fan of hard drives. Even as mass storage. I don't like having 2 different speed devices for storage. Not to mention I have very bad luck with hdd lifespan.

I'll go ahead with the 2 pro drives.

Side note: has anyone else had problems with Intel 320 series? My friend is running 2 80g drives in raid 0. He keeps having slow downs in windows 7 64 then he just reinstalls windows every 3-4 months to fix it. I've checked his PC and there aren't any viruses or anything like that. His startup times are over 3 minutes, same with shutdown. His restart times are the only thing that's about the speed that it should be.

Intel 320's dont have TRIM support in raid 0, at least out of the box, I forget if the firmware was updated to support it. If it was you would also need the latest intel RST driver as only version 11 an newer support trim with raid 0. I think RST is on version 12 now. I think ver 10 was common on like x58 and z69 which is likely what hes on. Also none of the 3rd party controllers back the support trim with raid or in many cases even just trim alone. It was also starting with the 11 that at some point the ahci driver was merged into the chipset driver and rst was only for raid. RSTe for x79 is now also mergered into standard RST when it use to use the same driver as the server chipsets.

So yea clean install fixes it because it reformats the drives starting them fresh or nearly fresh.

[Leonofhyjal]

Ah I see. Man that sucks for me though. I'll be over at his place fixing it and all his programs tomorrow lol. Well at least if they did update the firmware.

[TheProfosist]

Ah I see. Man that sucks for me though. I'll be over at his place fixing it and all his programs tomorrow lol. Well at least if they did update the firmware.

They did update the firmware I just dont know if that ever made it in. I think it did but didnt make it back to the X25-M gen 2 even though its basically the same drive. Either way make sure you get the stuff including RST direct from intel, you might as well just get the latest chipset drivers while your there too.

Oh and a BIOS update may also help if there is one available because sometimes they update the storage controller or chipset firmware.

[Leonofhyjal]

They did update the firmware I just dont know if that ever made it in. I think it did but didnt make it back to the X25-M gen 2 even though its basically the same drive. Either way make sure you get the stuff including RST direct from intel, you might as well just get the latest chipset drivers while your there too.

Oh and a BIOS update may also help if there is one available because sometimes they update the storage controller or chipset firmware.

Ugh bios updates... He's got my old 990x and gq assassin build. Gigabyte didn't support that board worth crap. Hell, half the gigabyte utilities don't even work anymore and cause chain blue screens when they launch on startup lol. Hey, at least he got 2 gtx 590s out of the deal lol. God I miss those cards sometimes. Even today they are beasts. 85 degree beasts lol

[WoodenMarker]

I'll go ahead with the 2 pro drives.

Unless you're getting it for a heavily discounted price, I'd suggest getting the Evo instead. The pro isn't worth the extra money except for perhaps the warranty. Even then, I reckon you'd be better off using the extra money for a future ssd upgrade since the prices are steadily dropping.