480GB Vs. 2x 240GB in RAID 0 SSD

[Bromundo]

Hey Linus Tech community,

I have done some research into the pros and cons of SSD's in RAID 0 versus a single SSD.

most of what I found were from older forums back when SSD's probably weren't quite as reliable as they are today and most of the time people would say 1 SSD is best, but on the newer forums the answers were more 50/50. I'm wondering what the best solution is for a rig where only programs which can be easily recovered are installed on the main drive (Windows & Games mostly) is.

 

The drives I have in mind are the Intel 730 SSD's where there is a lot of talk about them being excellent drives for RAID 0. For example Linus using them in the Ultimate 4k Gaming Build Guide back in June. Would 2x 240GB drives or 1x 480GB drive be a better solution for a rig where no important or unrecoverable files are stored. Also, will this affect game load times or is there a certain stage where other hardware or the game itself will prevent it from loading any faster.

 

Can someone please answer this from personal experience with both RAID 0 SSD's Vs 1 single SSD and give justification as to why Linus used them in his build guide as it wasn't very clear to me why he decided to go with the RAID 0 solution (his justification seemed to be that people wanted to know how to set up SSD's in RAID 0 - not because it is a better storage solution).

 

I am mostly asking out of curiosity as I am quite happy with my own storage solution. As mentioned earlier if someone who knows what they are talking about and/or has experience with this topic could answer rather than just giving the theoretical one sided answer it would be much appreciated. On a lot of forums people will mostly say yes or no and wont give good reasoning/ the pros and cons of each.

 

Thanks, and I apologise for how long this post is!

[SkilledRebuilds]

Hey Linus Tech community,

 

Hello,.. I have 2x 256GB 840Pro's - Disregarding advice of "Reliability/Uselessness" I put them in raid0, had 997/950 Read and Write speeds

 

Con's first...

Windows does not load faster(if anything, slower due to Mobo loading the Raid functions), most if not 99% of games do not load faster, the only thing that accelerates is disk searching.

 

Pro's

ie: Antivirus,File Scanning/Reads (Origin/Steam Repair as another example) are all blisteringly fast.

 

 

Since ditched it, and went back to 256GB C: and 256GB D:

Reliability wasn't an issue as I had a system image when I had it all installed and sorted, but as nothing I specifically did got faster, I went back to normal non-raid.

 

This is my experience over 2 months of having them in Raid0. There may be benefits in specific use cases, but I didn't experience much benefit.

Hope this helps somewhat...

[Bromundo]

So does it really just come down to how you're using them?

[SkilledRebuilds]

So does it really just come down to how you're using them?

Most likely, and btw - if you quote someone they will be notified of a reply, I checked back here myself, if I didn't, I'd not have known you replied.

If your using 2x SSD in Raid0 for a video editing rig scratch disk, I'm sure it would be a better experience, for a Gaming only system I dunno... Not in my case.

[Antistatic12]

From my personal experience.
I really saw no improvements, But it was a fun experiment so I don't regret it.

Pro's - for me, none.
Con's -  annoying when it failed, wasted my time

 

[Bromundo]

Hello,.. I have 2x 256GB 840Pro's - Disregarding advice of "Reliability/Uselessness" I put them in raid0, had 997/950 Read and Write speeds

 

Con's first...

Windows does not load faster, games do not load faster, the only thing that accelerates is disk searching.

 

Pro's

ie: Antivirus,File Scanning/Reads (Origin/Steam Repair as another example) are all blisteringly fast.

 

 

Since ditched it, and went back to 256GB C: and 256GB D:

Reliability wasn't an issue as I had a system image when I had it all installed and sorted, but as nothing I specifically did got faster, I went back to normal non-raid.

 

This is my experience over 2 months of having them in Raid0. There may be benefits in specific use cases, but I didn't experience much benefit.

Hope this helps somewhat...

This answers my question, thanks! I was aware of the pro's and con's but nowhere I looked really weighed them out against each other which just seemed like people were lazy or biased.

 

Edit: So for the average gamer who doesn't store important/hard to recover files on their drive, judging by your experience you might as well go with a single drive!

[Bromundo]

Most likely, and btw - if you quote someone they will be notified of a reply, I checked back here myself, if I didn't, I'd not have known you replied.

If your using 2x SSD in Raid0 for a video editing rig scratch disk, I'm sure it would be a better experience, for a Gaming only system I dunno... Not in my case.

I thought I pressed quote and then realised after posting it that I didn't. You pretty much answered my question perfectly so thanks again. Most of the answers were either price oriented or pretty much say that the higher chance of failure can only result in it being the worse solution and that there is no way any positive aspect can outweigh the unreliability of RAID 0 SSD's so I decided to try and get a solid answer with more if's and but's. Thanks! 

[Bromundo]

From my personal experience.

I really saw no improvements, But it was a fun experiment so I don't regret it.

Pro's - for me, none.

Con's -  annoying when it failed, wasted my time

 

Thanks for the answer, I appreciate that you're actually talking from personal experience!