From what I've read, the RAID 0 will bench better but the difference won't be noticeable in actual use. Also, boot times will actually go down due to the array having to initialize. You will also be bottlenecked by the SATA III top end since most modern SSDs are already pretty close to saturating it.
I have a disk based raid 0 array now and have not seen boot times increase because of their initialization. My system full restart cycle time is 16 seconds, so I am not worried. I have also looked at real world bench marks (synthetic but more mixed workloads then AS-SSD type benchmarks) and a dual 128 comes out ahead of a 256 by a good margin. I don't need much more SSD space, so no sense getting a 256 that performs worse.
You forget there are Two SATA III ports involved here. so you won't get bottlenecked at SATA III rates. Maybe by the Intel controller, but not by the SATA III rate. Haven't you seen raided SATA disk exceed 1000 MB/s in sequential reads and writes? That exceeds a single SATA III port, part of the whole point.
Please let us know how this works because I'm still waiting to read a single good report on RAID and WIn7 here. It seems dated technology with SSD's, sync and imaging, and isn't even redundant (the first letter in its name) since users often lose data when it fails.
Well I back up my system and data so I don't care if it is redundant, it is just striping for performance and a bigger volume.. I will use it for system plus games. I have M4 with games that is filling up.
I have a Raid 0 set on my z87 with two WDC 1TB Blue and I can report it is working flawlessly. I expect it will for the SSD as well.
BTW, Tom's hardware did a comparison of two raided Samsung vs. one larger one and ran many different benchmarks. Not that I put a lot of weight in what TH says, but the benchmarks speak for themselves if you want data points. In fact Lady F., the measured 2 x 128 GB Pro SSD in RAID 0 to boot windows 8 faster than one 128 GB Pro. So there is no initialization time penalty for RAID 0 overall.
It is not a misnomer since the 0 was intended to indicate no redundancy. It was not one of the original RAID levels.
It is not without merit for redundancy. Raid 10 is raid 0 across Raid 1 mirrored disks. This is a good and often used configuration for databases as the striping isn't burdened with parity calculations.
I know, we just went way off topic to play semantics games.If increased volume was all you needed, Windows Libraries would show both disks as a single volume without the risks inherent in RAID but, then again, you negate the risk by maintaining backups.
As good as the Blues are, they don't hold a candle, speed-wise, to SSDs. Spinners haven't even saturated SATA II speeds yet whereas many SSDs (and the Sammy 840 Pros are among the fastest, if not the fastest; even the 850 Pros are barely faster than the 840s) are coming close to saturating SATA III so, in a way, you are comparing apples and kumquats. RAID 0 made excellent sense when spinners were all we had but isn't really needed for SSDs.
Again, benchmarks don't tell the whole story. They can be impressive as all get out (and are great for bragging right; nothing wrong with that) but usually do not represent real life results. I tried RAPID on my first 840 EVO. The jump in the benchmarks reported by a couple different utilities (Magician and AS SSD) were incredible but, in actual use, I couldn't tell any difference in post boot performance (RAPID doesn't kick in until after boot) so I disabled it. Something else to keep in mind is speed is relative. Halving the time it takes to open a file that normally takes five seconds to open will be quite noticeable but halving the time it takes to open a file that normally opens in half a second will be barely noticeable.
Sorry but color me skeptical. I'm eager to see your results (actual times as measured with a watch from when one powers on to when the OS and startup programs are finished loading, assuming no programs are set for delayed startup, not just benchmarks). I'd have no problem if you were to prove me wrong (it certainly wouldn't be the first time).
None of this is to say you shouldn't be running your SSDs in RAID 0 (or is it AID 0?
Lady F. For the Raid 0 spinning disk. of course I know they don't hold a candle to SSD - why are you telling me the obvious. They are 2 TB aggregate however and cost less than $100. How much does 2TB of SSD cost? I only mentioned these because Greg said he heard bad things about RAID on windows 7 and I was relating my good experience about the raid.
If the benchmarks don't tell the whole story, then what does? I agree with you on RAPID, but that is a different story. That is caching that performs well on benches that fit in the cache, but everything has to eventually be written to disk. Beside, I don't have to justify this to you. It am getting more space that I need at better performance - it is a no brainer.
As I already related and which you seemed to have missed, RAID initialization doesn't really effect the boot time. You are probably propagating old information you heard from someone that had a bad raid controller or from some old motherboard implementation of raid. And there are direct tangible effects that are not subject to skepticism - manipulating large sequential files will be twice as fast for one. And I do.
Last edited by GeneO; 10 Nov 2014 at 09:10.
A new wish list added waiting for a deal to come forth soon or Black Friday from Crucial,
61.99 per,
Ram upgrade,
Part number: CT2K25664BA160BA
2-4GB kit (2GBx2) DDR3 PC3-12800 Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.5V 256Meg x 64
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