Large SSD vs Multiple Small Ones

[Tomiking]

Is there any downside to getting two 120GB SSDs and using then in RAID 0 instead of getting a 240GB SSD? (I don't care about the increased chances of drive failure and due to a sale both options would be close enough in price for that not to be a factor)

I don't really see any issues and it would be nice to have 2 drives that I can use for other things when I eventually upgrade my main PC again.

[Ciccioo]

nope, failure likelyhood is the only downside

[Freaky_spider]

240 gb is generaly cheaper?

 

but other then that fail chances are increased by 200%

[AMD Lover]

Multiple, Your failure rate is the same in my opinion their still SSDs. They all have a chance of failure.

[daemonowner]

Multiple, Your failure rate is the same in my opinion their still SSDs. They all have a chance of failure.

Imagine comparing 1 SSD to 1 million SSDs. What is more likely:

The 1 SSD will fail, or

1 of the 1 million SSDs will fail?

[Tomiking]

At least if one in the array fails, I can still use the other drive for a while. Whereas if I only had one drive and that died, I'd have to put my OS on a mechanical hard drive, and ever since I got my first SSD I decided that I will never do that.
And yes a larger one is usually better value but the smaller ones go on sale sometimes.
 

[AMD Lover]

Imagine comparing 1 SSD to 1 million SSDs. What is more likely:

The 1 SSD will fail, or

1 of the 1 million SSDs will fail?

By that logic is it better to have one TV and carry it around to different rooms because if you buy multiple theres a bigger chance for failure.

[AMD Lover]

At least if one in the array fails, I can still use the other drive for a while. Whereas if I only had one drive and that died, I'd have to put my OS on a mechanical hard drive, and ever since I got my first SSD I decided that I will never do that.

And yes a larger one is usually better value but the smaller ones go on sale sometimes.

 

If you do RAID 0 you loose all of your data if one drive fails. It basically splits files so if you copy a picture half of it goes on one and the other half on the other. Thats how I understand it anyways

[Tomiking]

By that logic is it better to have one TV and carry it around to different rooms because if you buy multiple theres a bigger chance for failure.

But in a RAID 0 array, if a single drive fails, you lose the data on all your drives. Its like those old Christmas tree lights where all the bulbs were hooked up in series so if one broke the  whole tree was dark.

[Tomiking]

Why is RAID 0 even considered a type of RAID? Seeing as its less redundant than individual drives?

[daemonowner]

By that logic is it better to have one TV and carry it around to different rooms because if you buy multiple theres a bigger chance for failure.

This is basic probability. You should have learned this in school. It is true that the chance of 1 of your TVs failing increases as you add more TVs. The failure rate is low, and so we don't increase the risk much by getting a couple TVs, one for each room. The reason you might get multiple TVs is that they are not portable, and the value of not having to move them into different rooms all the time outweighs the added risk of failure. I'm just educating you on probability. Using a couple of SSDs in Raid0 doesn't add much more risk, but it does add risk.

[AMD Lover]

But in a RAID 0 array, if a single drive fails, you lose the data on all your drives. Its like those old Christmas tree lights where all the bulbs were hooked up in series so if one broke the  whole tree was dark.

I know this but if the drives both work when you get them then its a pretty good chance that they are both going to last a long time. Usually if SSD's die its because it was DOA and when SSD's die mid use its usually from a cheap company.

[Tomiking]

This is basic probability. You should have learned this in school. It is true that the chance of 1 of your TVs failing increases as you add more TVs. The failure rate is low, and so we don't increase the risk much by getting a couple TVs, one for each room. The reason you might get multiple TVs is that they are not portable, and the value of not having to move them into different rooms all the time outweighs the added risk of failure. I'm just educating you on probability. Using a couple of SSDs in Raid0 doesn't add much more risk, but it does add risk.

This is true.

Do you happen to know what the chances of a good brand (samsung, crucial etc) SSD dying within like 3 years is? 

[Vitalius]

240 gb is generaly cheaper?

 

but other then that fail chances are increased by 200%

200% of 0.00001% is 0.00002%

Whip-de-doo.

[daemonowner]

The odds of it failing within 3 years is very low. That's why they give them 3 year warranties.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Is there any downside to getting two 120GB SSDs and using then in RAID 0 instead of getting a 240GB SSD? (I don't care about the increased chances of drive failure and due to a sale both options would be close enough in price for that not to be a factor)

I don't really see any issues and it would be nice to have 2 drives that I can use for other things when I eventually upgrade my main PC again.

Reliability is reduced with multiple drives, but SSDs are so reliable already that it wouldn't be my main concern.

 

The biggest one for me would be that I lose more SATA slots, meaning I can put fewer drives into a computer. If you don't anticipate needing all your SATA ports, then multiple SSDs in RAID is fine.

 

I still recommend a single 240GB drive, just for simplicity.

[IdeaStormer]

But in a RAID 0 array, if a single drive fails, you lose the data on all your drives. Its like those old Christmas tree lights where all the bulbs were hooked up in series so if one broke the  whole tree was dark.

 

Well if you only have one drive and that one drive fails Xmas will be canceled. In a two SSD RAID 0 you can still use the functional drive and Xmas will be saved! (after you re-install of course, and with half the storage space but hey some storage space)

[Dimwitted]

Go with one drive. Generally, for the desktop, unless you're doing massive files, you won't see that much of a difference between the RAID and the generally fast SSD. The SATA bus is getting saturated as it is. Also, a 240gb drive is always faster than a 128. It's the math. Just go with the 240 right from the start.

[cookiesowns]

Funny no one mentioned...

 

 

Performance on larger drives is generally better. Remember, the more you fill up an SSD the more often GC needs to run to regain performance. On another note, RAID-0 is perfectly fine for SSD's infact, I run raid-0 on 27% OP'd ssd's for several years now with no failure. Of course I have backups so I'm confident...

 

Anyways quick lesson on RAID:

 

RAID-0 is stripes. So let's say you want to store a 10MB file & ignoring stripe size and block boundries, a 10MB file can be evenly halfed to 5MB, each drive in a 2 drive RAID-0 only gets written 5MB of data instead of 10MB.

What does that mean? 50% more lifespan on the SSD if you don't account for premature failure. Which means, given no other outside influences 2 drive RAID-0 COULD last longer than a single SSD.

[Walterg74]

Why is RAID 0 even considered a type of RAID? Seeing as its less redundant than individual drives?

Oh, oh I'll take this one!

That's because you don't know what raid means... Sure, "redundant" may lead to believe redundacy is the main idea, but it's not...

RAID came into play when they realized that at one point, if you can't improve a technology to make it faster, one way to do,that is to,just more than one of it.. Hence the redundadt array of indepenent disks...

RAID 0 improves both read and write times by a factor of 1/n where n is the number of disks, since to read/write files you only need to spend time to write the size of the file divided by the number of disks (roughly).hence, performance, but of course no redundancy, so lose one lose all as others have pointed out...

So yeah, not really a redundancy "raid" but definitely a performance config.