Interesting drive combination

greenmonk10 · September 17, 2015

So in my current rig I've got an Intel 730 series 240GB SSD boot drive with a 3 TB WD green for daily backups. My intention was to add SSD storage as needed for programs and I've hit my limit. I took advantage of a deal on Newegg to get 4 Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB, but now I'm not sure what configuration would be best. That is, I'm not sure whether to run some sort of RAID array, and if I do, I'm not sure which drive should be my boot drive. I have an MSI x99s gaming 7 motherboard which supports some RAID functionality, and I don't want to buy a RAID card.

scottyseng · September 17, 2015

So in my current rig I've got an Intel 730 series 240GB SSD boot drive with a 3 TB WD green for daily backups. My intention was to add SSD storage as needed for programs and I've hit my limit. I took advantage of a deal on Newegg to get 4 Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB, but now I'm not sure what configuration would be best. That is, I'm not sure whether to run some sort of RAID array, and if I do, I'm not sure which drive should be my boot drive. I have an MSI x99s gaming 7 motherboard which supports some RAID functionality, and I don't want to buy a RAID card.

The Sandisk Ultras aren't exactly the fastest SSDs around. It depends on your needs. I would say to keep all four SSDs separate, otherwise put them in RAID 10 (If you have enough ports on the motherboard). You can do all of this on software RAID using your motherboard and you won't have to buy a RAID card if you have the ports available for it.

I personally would've saved the money and bought a single larger SSD because some RAID controllers don't support TRIM so the performance of the SSDs will drop over time.

I would keep the 730 as the OS drive since it's the largest, and put the four Sandisks in RAID10. If you want to live the really risky life, you can RAID0 all of the Sandisk SSDs, but I'd avoid that.

Mighty_Miro_WD · September 17, 2015

Hi there @greenmonk10!

Since you have 4x120GB SSDs I would suggest to put them in some kind of RAID, and to use the current one you have as a boot drive. For instance, two in RAID 0, which will increase the sequential throughput. Since there is an extra layer, you take a hit in random access performance. You'll have no redundancy with this array, so if you decide to go with it I would recommend to make a regular backup of all the important information you have.

Another option is to setup a RAID 5. It stores parity data, allowing recovery from a drive failure (if a drive fails, the data that was on it can be rebuilt from the data on the other drives plus the parity data). With RAID 5 rather than having all the parities stored on a dedicated drive, they're distributed among all the drives. Hypothetical read performance is like a same-size RAID 0 array, whereas write performance is like a RAID 0 array 1 drive smaller. It requires at least 3 drives.

Or lastly you can also setup RAID 6, which is identical to RAID 5, but it has 2 sets of parity data, allowing the array to recover from 2 drive failures rather than just one.

As for the WD Green, I would suggest to keep it as a backup location.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Cheers!