Upgrading SSD?

[kb5zue]

Hello All,  current equipment:

 

Asus Sabertooth 990FX 3.0 motherboard

AMD FX8370 unlocked

Samsung 850 Evo Pro 512 ssd

 

Want to upgrade my storage space so, do I replace my current SSD with something like a 1 terabyte ssd or do I get another SSD like the one I have and hook the two of them up in raid?

 

Thanks.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just get a second drive. id probably get a hdd.

[kb5zue]

Going to stick with the SSD, have hdd's for backups, etc.  Just trying to decide which way to go.  Larger ssd, or same ssd and raid?

 

[Windows7ge]

I'd put the OS and important games on the SSD then all storage files (videos, music, photos, documents) on a HDD maybe a 2TB to compensate for future expansion.

[Electronics Wizardy]

 

Going to stick with the SSD, have hdd's for backups, etc.  Just trying to decide which way to go.  Larger ssd, or same ssd and raid?

 

just get a second ssd, doesn't have to be the same, Id will be mounted in a different location, and you just save files on that drive.

[Windows7ge]

 

Going to stick with the SSD, have hdd's for backups, etc.  Just trying to decide which way to go.  Larger ssd, or same ssd and raid?

 

Well you'd be choosing between:

Slightly better read/write performance (limit is 750MB/s max theoretical) and I/O operations (super high I/O is not that useful for a home computer user) at the risk of taking 0 redundancy and giving yourself -0.5 redundancy because you'd be doubling the failure rate.

 

Or just a bigger drive similar performance but more storage and less problems. Plus an old 512GB SSD that you can use in something else.

[kb5zue]

I think I may have left out some information.  I "think" what I'm trying to do is increase the size of the C: drive.  I have hdd's for the other "misc." stuff along with the backups, etc.  It is my C: drive ssd that I want to increase the size of.  But if I get a second ssd that is NOT the same as the first then I won't be able to hook them up in raid0, right?

 

I know what raid0 is, but not the other raid setups.

 

Thanks for the help and information.

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Going faster than SATA speeds on an SSD is relatively pointless for most users. The returns in performance diminish practically right there.

[jools]

raid drives are matching while different drives are jbod

[jools]

RAID Levels

RAID isn’t just a single way of combining disks. There are multiple RAID levels that provide different levels of performance and redundancy. All RAID levels have one thing in common: they combine multiple physical disks into a single logical disk that is presented to the operating system.

• RAID 0: Unlike other RAID levels, RAID 0 provides no redundancy. However, RAID 0 allows you to increase performance using multiple disks. When you use RAID 0, data your computer writes to a hard disk is split across two (or more) hard drives evenly. For example, if your computer writes a 100MB file, 50MB will be written to one hard drive and 50MB will be written to the other hard drive. When the computer needs to read the file back, it can read 50MB from one hard drive and 50MB from the other hard drive at the same time — this will be faster than reading 100MB from a single hard drive. However, if any of the hard drives in the RAID array dies, you’ll lose your data. When you use RAID 0, your multiple disks appear to be a larger and faster hard disk — but they’re much more fragile.
• RAID 1: In RAID 1, two disks are configured to mirror each other. When your computer writes 100MB of data to its disks, it will write the same 100MB to both hard disks. Each disk contains a complete copy of the data. This ensures that, if one of the disks ever fails, you will always have a complete, up-to-date copy of your data.
• RAID 2, 3, and 4: These RAID levels are little-used and often considered obsolete.
• RAID 5: To use RAID 5, you will need at least three disks. RAID 5 uses striping to divide data across all hard drives, with additional parity data divided across all disks. If one of the hard drives dies, you won’t lose any of your data. RAID 5 offers data redundancy with less storage cost than RAID 1 — for example, if you had four 1TB hard drives, you could create two separate RAID 1 arrays (1TB each for a total of 2TB storage space) or a single RAID 5 array with 3TB of storage space.
• RAID 6: RAID 6 is similar to RAID 5, but adds an additional parity block, writing two parity blocks for each bit of data striped across the disks. You lose storage capacity, but RAID 6 provides additional protection from data loss. For example, if two hard drives die in a RAID 5 configuration, you’ll lose your data. If two hard drives die in a RAID 6 configuration, you’ll still have all your data.
• RAID 10: Also known as RAID 1+0, RAID 10 divides data between primary disks and mirrors this data to secondary disks. In this way, it attempts to provide the advantages of RAID 0 (dividing data across multiple disks for a performance increase) with the advantages of RAID 1 (redundancy).

There are also other, non-standard RAID levels.

[kb5zue]

Want to thank everyone that replied, really preciate it.  I think I will go with the bigger drive idea, then I will take the 512 that I already have and put it in my son's machine to help him to speed his up.  Take care and thanks again.  I know the Raid 0 would not effectively speed things up, speed was not my intention, just increasing the size of the drive.