Larger SSD or two smaller SSD's in RAID0

[Evil-Erthanu]

Hi guys,

 

At the moment, I have a single 120gb SSD, but it's a little small for what I need. As i see it, i have two options: Sell my current SSD to recoup the cost then buy a larger one. Or buy another 120gb ssd and use raid 0.

The raid0 will give me a nice speed boost, but is obviously more risky when it comes to potential data loss and I don't have a very good way to do effective backups, the only other disk in my system is a 1tb WD blue. The raid0 option will also be slightly more expensive, assuming I could sell my SSD for 80% of what I paid for it.

 

What do you guys think I should do?

 

P.S Any tips for securely erasing SSD's should I end up selling it. Ideally I would pass it on to a friend or family member though.

[ESPclipse]

It is always safer to have fewer drives. Especially with SSDs, if one drive dies in RAID0, the whole system drive array fails, which means you are SOL

[Enderman]

one large one

there is less risk of losing data, and you dont have to deal with any problems with raid volumes, incompatibilities, etc...

its less trouble, and one SSD is already extremely fast

you wont really notice a difference between 500 and 1000MBps unless youre moving files around all day

programs and games will feel the same

[Dabombinable]

It is always safer to have fewer drives. Especially with SSDs, if one drive dies in RAID0, the whole system drive array fails, which means you are SOL

Its the same as having a single SSD, if that fails you lose your data. Which is why no matter what your setup do constant backups.

 

Hi guys,

 

At the moment, I have a single 120gb SSD, but it's a little small for what I need. As i see it, i have two options: Sell my current SSD to recoup the cost then buy a larger one. Or buy another 120gb ssd and use raid 0.

The raid0 will give me a nice speed boost, but is obviously more risky when it comes to potential data loss and I don't have a very good way to do effective backups, the only other disk in my system is a 1tb WD blue. The raid0 option will also be slightly more expensive, assuming I could sell my SSD for 80% of what I paid for it.

 

What do you guys think I should do?

 

P.S Any tips for securely erasing SSD's should I end up selling it. Ideally I would pass it on to a friend or family member though.

Buy the same model SSD and put it in RAID 0, no matter which configuration if 1 SSD dies all data is lost. Which is as I mentioned is why you do backups.

[ESPclipse]

Its the same as having a single SSD, if that fails you lose your data. Which is why no matter what your setup do constant backups.

 

Buy the same model SSD and put it in RAID 0, no matter which configuration if 1 SSD dies all data is lost. Which is as I mentioned is why you do backups.

You have your RAID types backward - RAID0 is stripe volume, RAID1 is mirror

[Dabombinable]

You have your RAID types backward - RAID0 is stripe volume, RAID1 is mirror

I know, I'm simply stating that either way 1 SSD would fail (aka, a single large SSD, or 1 of the SSD in the RAI 0 array) and all data would be lost. (which again is why you should always have a backup).

[ESPclipse]

I know, I'm simply stating that either way 1 SSD would fail (aka, a single large SSD, or 1 of the SSD in the RAI 0 array) and all data would be lost. (which again is why you should always have a backup).

Backup is always necessary, I agree, but he odds of one of two drives (AKA RAID0) failing is twice that of only drive, which is why I suggested nixing the RAID0 idea.

[Evil-Erthanu]

Buy the same model SSD and put it in RAID 0, no matter which configuration if 1 SSD dies all data is lost. Which is as I mentioned is why you do backups.

Though your chances of data loss are still higher when you have two potential points of failure instead of just one.

 

I don't really think for what I do that I would really benefit from raid0, and I think I would have to invest into a slightly better backup solution too, not that I have proper backups now either... 

[Dabombinable]

Backup is always necessary, I agree, but he odds of one of two drives (AKA RAID0) failing is twice that of only drive, which is why I suggested nixing the RAID0 idea.

Its not like they are HDD, they have a vastly lower failure rate than any HDD.

[guyf2010]

Depends on what you use it for. I use two 128GB SSDs in RAID 0, and it does have some upsides. If you play the Battlefield series, loading is significantly faster. Although there is the risk factor of a drive failing, Keep in mind there tests showing SSDs still working after petabytes of data transfer. If my make periodical backups, you should be fine. The drive failure isn't that significant if you look at from the viewpoint that although you loose all data after the first drive fails, you loose all data when your single drive fails as well.

[ltguy]

1 large ssd is safe... boring and just like everyone else. 2 ssds in raid is 1000MB/s, baller, and something your friends will envy. You decide.

 

Data redundancy... we have steam now (scoff), shit can be re installed. Performance is king. You want redundancy build a nas.

[Evil-Erthanu]

How do you guys do your backups? Do you back up to another disk in your system, to an external drive, to a nas? 

 

 

 

1 large ssd is safe... boring and just like everyone else. 2 ssds in raid is 1000MB/s, baller, and something your friends will envy. You decide.

I think you just convinced me

[ltguy]

How do you guys do your backups? Do you back up to another disk in your system, to an external drive, to a nas? 

I just image my os install once its like i want it. I push all my important stuff to the cloud and if its lost, i call up the NSA to restore from their nightly backup.

[Dabombinable]

How do you guys do your backups? Do you back up to another disk in your system, to an external drive, to a nas? 

 

I think you just convinced me

I use my SSD as a boot drive and for games with loads of large maps (Eg. Halo CE), and a 1TB WD Blue as the storage drive with a 2TB USB 3.0 drive for long term storage. And actually using the SSD as a boot drive and the HDD for storage saves wear on both, so they both last a lot longer.

[mr moose]

 I was looking at doing an ssd raid, but then I read a few reviews and the real performance was not enough to make the effort worth while.  It seems that any speed increases you will notice are restricted to commercial applications and bench marks, loading windows, games, etc and the raid performance was only a second or two faster. 

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-13.html

 

So in my mind it is not worth the effort, just get one slightly larger drive (it might even be a few dollars cheaper per gig).

[Django]

Its not like they are HDD, they have a vastly lower failure rate than any HDD.

SSD's do fail though. All drives are going to fail eventually whether that's one drive with all your data or a drive which is part of an array. I wonder how many people who preach "using 2 drives in RAID 0 increases your chance of disk failure" use more than one drive in their systems. I'd bet it's quite a lot.

[Dabombinable]

SSD's do fail though. All drives are going to fail eventually whether that's one drive with all your data or a drive which is part of an array. I wonder how many people who preach "using 2 drives in RAID 0 increases your chance of disk failure use more than one drive in their systems. I'd bet it's quite a lot.

The risk is actually about the same, because writing to them is alternated. Say you've got the stripe size set to 256KB, 256KB is written to one drive, then the other and so on.

[Django]

Drives fail for reasons other than writing to them. Outcome is the same, you replace the faulty drive.

 

Alternatively you could break the array and use the remaining drive(s) to recover or re-install if you have enough space for what you need to run your system on. However you can not do that if you are only using a single drive and it fails, replacement is the only option.

[Evil-Erthanu]

 

 

Alternatively you could break the array and use the remaining drive(s) to recover or re-install if you have enough space for what you need to run your system on. However you can not do that if you are only using a single drive and it fails, replacement is the only option.

This is a good point, thanks. I'm probably going to go with the two drive option, and work on setting up some kind of decent backups. 

 

Is it advised to use the exact same models of drive? I cant seem to find what I have at any NZ retailers, I try to avoid having to buy off amazon if I don't have to (supporting local businesses), but I guess I will.

[Captain_WD]

Hi guys,

 

At the moment, I have a single 120gb SSD, but it's a little small for what I need. As i see it, i have two options: Sell my current SSD to recoup the cost then buy a larger one. Or buy another 120gb ssd and use raid 0.

The raid0 will give me a nice speed boost, but is obviously more risky when it comes to potential data loss and I don't have a very good way to do effective backups, the only other disk in my system is a 1tb WD blue. The raid0 option will also be slightly more expensive, assuming I could sell my SSD for 80% of what I paid for it.

 

What do you guys think I should do?

 

P.S Any tips for securely erasing SSD's should I end up selling it. Ideally I would pass it on to a friend or family member though.

 

 

Hey Evil-Erthanu,

 

My vote would be for one larger SSD since I believe SSDs are already fast enough for consumer usage. 

 

RAID0 offers zero redundancy and if either of the drives in it fails, drops out or goes out of synchronization you would lose all data on the whole array. RAID0 gives you great speed boost but actually increases the cold booting time (the RAID needs to be initialized first) and involves a larger chance of data loss, due to its nature. Using HDDs in RAID makes more sense than using SSDs. Here's an example: games rely on storage only for their loading times and FPS and graphics will not be affected at all. Here's an example of the speed boost when using SSDs and HDDs: The jump in load times from HDD to SSD is like 10s to 1s. RAID 0 effectively (theoretically) halves the load time. So if you were to RAID 0 mechanical drives, it's 10s to 5s. You derive 5s of benefit. If you were to RAID 0 SSDs instead, its like 1s to 0.5s. You derive 0.5s of benefit.

 

You can always perform "writing zeros" to completely wipe the drive's data, but a simple secure erase or format should do the trick.

 

Captain_WD.

[mr moose]

I wonder how many people who preach "using 2 drives in RAID 0 increases your chance of disk failure" use more than one drive in their systems. I'd bet it's quite a lot.

 

Regardless of whether they do or not, statistically if you are relying on two drives to do the job of one,  you are increasing your possible points of failure. 

 

for a striped array:

every drive has a failure rate average of 2%   so

1 drive = failure rate of 2%

2 drives each have a failure rate of 2% now gives you a 4% failure rate.

[CalebTheEternal]

This might help: 

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/348284-raid-10-or-raid-0-is-it-worth-it/#entry4742381

[Evil-Erthanu]

@captain_WD

 

 

Thanks for the awesome reply, earlier I said I was convinced to go with raid, but I think you're right. It's going to be a whole lot easier to get everything transferred to a new disk than to learn how to set up raid and get it working how I want it. It's true I wont really benefit from raid0, my pc is mainly only used for gaming and productivity/programming, I might as well just go with the single drive, grandma sure could use a hand me down SSD for her old and slow computer

[Dabombinable]

 

Hey Evil-Erthanu,

 

My vote would be for one larger SSD since I believe SSDs are already fast enough for consumer usage. 

 

RAID0 offers zero redundancy and if either of the drives in it fails, drops out or goes out of synchronization you would lose all data on the whole array. RAID0 gives you great speed boost but actually increases the cold booting time (the RAID needs to be initialized first) and involves a larger chance of data loss, due to its nature. Using HDDs in RAID makes more sense than using SSDs. Here's an example: games rely on storage only for their loading times and FPS and graphics will not be affected at all. Here's an example of the speed boost when using SSDs and HDDs: The jump in load times from HDD to SSD is like 10s to 1s. RAID 0 effectively (theoretically) halves the load time. So if you were to RAID 0 mechanical drives, it's 10s to 5s. You derive 5s of benefit. If you were to RAID 0 SSDs instead, its like 1s to 0.5s. You derive 0.5s of benefit.

 

You can always perform "writing zeros" to completely wipe the drive's data, but a simple secure erase or format should do the trick.

 

Captain_WD.

 

So RAID 0 is more relevant for HDD instead of SSD?

[Captain_WD]

So RAID 0 is more relevant for HDD instead of SSD?

 

 

For everyday usage - yes. Since most SSDs have speeds around 500MB/s and working with them results in almost instant access to files and quick loading of programs, bringing down a 5-second long load to half the speed won't be anywhere near as beneficial as bringing a 30-40-second load to half the speed when it comes to HDDs. 

 

There are specific programs and usages that benefit from the great speeds of SSDs in RAID0 (over 1GB/s, etc.), but most consumer usage types wouldn't notice that huge jump as the computer would be already pretty fast with a single SSD (loading the OS, games and programs, great transfer speeds, etc.). 

 

Captain_WD.