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SSD - To RAID or not to RAID

Rbourgaize
By Rbourgaize
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by Captain_WD,

OK guys, after spending many hours enjoying Linus' youtube channel, it was time to finally join the forumn and ask the question straight.

 

I am planning to purchase a new laptop, which will actually work as my desktop at home and at work.  But I also like to travel, and I make my money whilst travelling making underwater movies and promotional material for diving companies.  So my needs for a device are power and portability, two pre-requisites that normally are quite hard to achieve together.  After some (and by some I mean a lot) digging, I came up with the newly released PCSpecialist Defiance laptop which is based on a cleave barebone.  My specs are as follows:

 

i7 4710HQ

16GB Kingston Hyper-X RAM

GTX 970m 3GB

1080p Screen (There was an option for 3k & 4k but after some research it seems these screens have massive power draws and current OS' don't handle these high DPI screens very well at the moment)

 

But my biggest question as per the topic is the storage.

 

Aside from standard 2.5" HDDs and SSD options, I am able to chose up to 2xM.2 PCI-E based SSDs.  And with the limited funding I have left, I either go with the 256GB Plextor PX-G128M6e drive or two 128GB variants in a RAID 0 config.  My intention was also to throw in a spare 1TB HDD in the laptop for general storage.  I am aware of the inherent risk due to a RAID 0, but as this will be only for OS + Progs, all important data is actively backed up via my personal server or 'cloud'.  Although theoretically running RAID will result in huge speed improvements, will that also apply to 4K read/writes and is it really worth doing when each SSD alone achieves sequential reads of over 1,100MBs and writes of over 800MBs, as reviewed by notebookcheck.com

 

Your thoughts and opinions will be greatly appreciated.  Also if any of you regularly use Premiere Pro and feel well informed as to proper HDD configuration for this application, a recommendation as to what should be assigned to which drive would also be welcomed.

 

Many Thanks

Ryan

 

 

The laptop configurator from PCSpecialist :

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/defiance-15/

 

 

Hey Rbourgaize and welcome to Linus Tech Tips forum :)
 
Nice choice on the laptop parts. It looks like a great portable beast. :)
 
Regarding the RAID, I wouldn't go for two separate SSDs and put them in RAID. Even though they bring a good boost to read/writ speeds, you are getting a big risk if failure and losing all your data on them including everything cached and not moved to an external storage (external drive, NAS, etc.). Moreover, boot time is likely to increase rather than decrease.
 
IMHO a single bigger SSD is already fast enough for any kind of work that you'd be doing on the laptop and I would get a bigger one and an internal HDD for more storage space.
 
I would support @Matacks's opinion about the online support and driver issue and say that it's a pain to look for each driver for each part on the respective manufacturer's website in case something happens. Make sure you have the proper links before you purchase. :)
 
Hope this helps,
 
Captain_WD.
Posted

OK guys, after spending many hours enjoying Linus' youtube channel, it was time to finally join the forumn and ask the question straight.

 

I am planning to purchase a new laptop, which will actually work as my desktop at home and at work.  But I also like to travel, and I make my money whilst travelling making underwater movies and promotional material for diving companies.  So my needs for a device are power and portability, two pre-requisites that normally are quite hard to achieve together.  After some (and by some I mean a lot) digging, I came up with the newly released PCSpecialist Defiance laptop which is based on a cleave barebone.  My specs are as follows:

 

i7 4710HQ

16GB Kingston Hyper-X RAM

GTX 970m 3GB

1080p Screen (There was an option for 3k & 4k but after some research it seems these screens have massive power draws and current OS' don't handle these high DPI screens very well at the moment)

 

But my biggest question as per the topic is the storage.

 

Aside from standard 2.5" HDDs and SSD options, I am able to chose up to 2xM.2 PCI-E based SSDs.  And with the limited funding I have left, I either go with the 256GB Plextor PX-G128M6e drive or two 128GB variants in a RAID 0 config.  My intention was also to throw in a spare 1TB HDD in the laptop for general storage.  I am aware of the inherent risk due to a RAID 0, but as this will be only for OS + Progs, all important data is actively backed up via my personal server or 'cloud'.  Although theoretically running RAID will result in huge speed improvements, will that also apply to 4K read/writes and is it really worth doing when each SSD alone achieves sequential reads of over 1,100MBs and writes of over 800MBs, as reviewed by notebookcheck.com

 

Your thoughts and opinions will be greatly appreciated.  Also if any of you regularly use Premiere Pro and feel well informed as to proper HDD configuration for this application, a recommendation as to what should be assigned to which drive would also be welcomed.

 

Many Thanks

Ryan

 

 

The laptop configurator from PCSpecialist :

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/defiance-15/

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That is a nifty laptop builder thing. I think that 8gb of ram is a pretty good baseline though. The only thing I wasn't crazy about on that site was that I couldn't find a support page to download drivers. I would just think that would be an important thing for a kind of custom laptop online retailer.

As for raid 0 SSDs, I think it's a great idea but only if you are going to use larger capacity drives. it doesnt seem worth while with two 128gb drives.. it seems larger capacity drives get better performance as well. A thing that may be more important than this is to make sure the SSDs will happy with being put into a raid and that trim will work. apparently not all SSDS like to be put into a raid. Of course you need the raid driver for your laptop too so hopefully you can get that.

You cant really go wrong with a single larger capacity SSD with along with a regular HDD if you decide to pass Raid 0.

Also, if you're in the market for a gaming laptop you may want to check out ASUS and MSI gaming laptops. A nice the about them is many of their laptops have backlit keyboards. Many of them can set up for raid 0 as well but doing so yourself will likely void the warranty because you have to break a sticker on the back to get to the components. Its dumb I know. Then you gave to go through a long arduous process of doing a fresh windows install.. well that's only hard if your trying to clone you're oem version.. retail is much easier.. but anyway..

Goodluck :)

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OK guys, after spending many hours enjoying Linus' youtube channel, it was time to finally join the forumn and ask the question straight.

 

I am planning to purchase a new laptop, which will actually work as my desktop at home and at work.  But I also like to travel, and I make my money whilst travelling making underwater movies and promotional material for diving companies.  So my needs for a device are power and portability, two pre-requisites that normally are quite hard to achieve together.  After some (and by some I mean a lot) digging, I came up with the newly released PCSpecialist Defiance laptop which is based on a cleave barebone.  My specs are as follows:

 

i7 4710HQ

16GB Kingston Hyper-X RAM

GTX 970m 3GB

1080p Screen (There was an option for 3k & 4k but after some research it seems these screens have massive power draws and current OS' don't handle these high DPI screens very well at the moment)

 

But my biggest question as per the topic is the storage.

 

Aside from standard 2.5" HDDs and SSD options, I am able to chose up to 2xM.2 PCI-E based SSDs.  And with the limited funding I have left, I either go with the 256GB Plextor PX-G128M6e drive or two 128GB variants in a RAID 0 config.  My intention was also to throw in a spare 1TB HDD in the laptop for general storage.  I am aware of the inherent risk due to a RAID 0, but as this will be only for OS + Progs, all important data is actively backed up via my personal server or 'cloud'.  Although theoretically running RAID will result in huge speed improvements, will that also apply to 4K read/writes and is it really worth doing when each SSD alone achieves sequential reads of over 1,100MBs and writes of over 800MBs, as reviewed by notebookcheck.com

 

Your thoughts and opinions will be greatly appreciated.  Also if any of you regularly use Premiere Pro and feel well informed as to proper HDD configuration for this application, a recommendation as to what should be assigned to which drive would also be welcomed.

 

Many Thanks

Ryan

 

 

The laptop configurator from PCSpecialist :

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/defiance-15/

 

 

Hey Rbourgaize and welcome to Linus Tech Tips forum :)
 
Nice choice on the laptop parts. It looks like a great portable beast. :)
 
Regarding the RAID, I wouldn't go for two separate SSDs and put them in RAID. Even though they bring a good boost to read/writ speeds, you are getting a big risk if failure and losing all your data on them including everything cached and not moved to an external storage (external drive, NAS, etc.). Moreover, boot time is likely to increase rather than decrease.
 
IMHO a single bigger SSD is already fast enough for any kind of work that you'd be doing on the laptop and I would get a bigger one and an internal HDD for more storage space.
 
I would support @Matacks's opinion about the online support and driver issue and say that it's a pain to look for each driver for each part on the respective manufacturer's website in case something happens. Make sure you have the proper links before you purchase. :)
 
Hope this helps,
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Thank you very much Captain_WD that was just the informed opinion I was looking for!

 

@ Matacks - They send a disk with the drivers for your machine, for either the supplied operating system or operating system of your choice.  Also as I read, I believe once you become a member of them, when you log in you are able to download the drivers for the machine purchased.

 

@ Zinqs - This laptop comes with the new M.2 PCI-E x4 based SSDs

 

Edit

@ Zinqs - My apologies, this particular laptop comes with PCI-E x2 based SSD as per following review with R770/W625

http://www.legitreviews.com/plextor-m6e-256gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-review_144812

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