Hi, i was wondering what would i choose
On one hand, i have:
2x GTX 295 and 4 Normal HD in Raid 0
And in the other hand i have
2x GTX 285 and SSD TorqX 256gb
The SSD i would have to chip from USA, and there is the possibility for them to steal my HD in the mail.
If you want speed, go for the SSD - nothing beats it, Raid or not. But check out the OCZ Vertex and Intel X25M too. In any case make sure there is Trim support in the firmware - else the writes will slow down over time. W7 supports Trim and also does all the other usual tweaks (alignment, Superfetch disable, etc.) automatically. Real nice fit.
You could even consider a smaller SSD (60 or 80GBs would be ample for W7) plus a larger HDD for the bulk data.
What applications, or application types, are you going to use? Is it for games or video editing?
I am guessing games. In which case, go with something other than 4 drives in RAID0. Too many opportunities for sudden system shutdowns - and drive corruption.
having the better graphics cards may give you more frames per second, but i doubt you would notice the difference, unless you play at super hi-res
you will notice the ssd though! especially as it has an indilinx mlc contoller in it.
more info on indilinx here
hey Alex,
I recommend SSD because it can achieve incredible speed, produces almost no heat (which means you don't have to worry about cooling), and is very reliable.
As for the shipping needs you can ship it from the US to where you are, with other stuff, like books and what not to try and hide it, so no one would steal any thing.
for ex. if you know some one in the US you can send it to them and they would put what you have bought in a box with other stuff you want, it might reduce the chance of it getting stolen.
Hope this helps.
I would also suggest going the SSD route over the RAID0 route with regular hard drives. I'm not a fan of RAID0 arrays since they offer no redundancy at all. In fact, if any of the drives fail you lose everything. I realize that with a single SSD drive, if it fails you lose everything...but the liklihood of a failure increases when you have 4 drives versus a single drive.
Actually, Dinesh, this is one of the rare times that I am pointing away from RAID. A four disk RAID0 is hazardously risky for a gamer with no backup capacity of equal or greater size.
RAID0+1 is an option if the current controller supports it though. And not a bad option at that.
Based on GB per $, I am waiting at least a year before adopting SSD into my configuration.
RAID doesn't necessarily mean backup....or redundancy.
In the case of RAID0 (striping), there is no redundancy. If you have 4 x 100GB drives, you have a total of 400GB of space. The system will write 1/4 of each file to each of the drives. Thus, if any of the 4 drives fail, you lose absolutely everything.
In the case of RAID 1 (mirror), you have 2 discs with exactly the same info..however if you have 2 x 500GB drive...you have a total of 500GB of space. So, you lose 1/2 of your total space. RAID1 gives you full redundancy, however if you accidentally delete a file or get a virus which deletes files, you lose it in both places at the same time.
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