Raid 0 SSD vs Stand alone SSD for OS

[tswa]

Hey,
(background) I have been slowly building up my system since I got it in December. System info: Asus P6T Deluxe MoBo, Core i7 920 OCed to 3.8 ghz, 3 gb ram, 3 x 500 gb Samsung HDDs in Raid 5 w/ 1 x 500 gb Hitachi HDD stand alone, EVGA 9800 GTX, powered by an Antec 1000W PSU.

(Problem) My next move is for a solid state Operating System Drive. But I am caught by a snag in choice. Do I go with two smaller (30 gb) SSDs in a raid 0 format? or do I go with a single 60 gb SSD stand alone and save about 50-60 bucks? I know I am going to see a huge performance boost in load time no matter what way I choose. I Just need advice before I spend $210 (1 x 60gb) vs $260 (2 x 30 gb). In my research before posting I came across this article in the Revision3 forums <http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531> and from this article I have decided to go with the OCZ Vertex Series SSD. Cited to be the best bang for your buck. See the article i referred to for the performance of these drives. updated prices as of April 22, 2008 are to follow.
Prices from newegg.com:
OCZ Vertex 60 gb SSD = $209.00
OCZ Vertex 30 gb SSD = $129.00 (after instant savings)
Intel X25-M 80 gb SSD (King of the SSD hill) = $363.00 (not getting this one)

(Question) Is the performance boost of raid 0 worth the $50? ( I will be using the Raid controller built into the MoBo and plugging the SSD(s) into the Server? (orange) sata ports on the mother board)

(Answer).........

[Phil.Mize]

Well if you run the 30gig ssd's in raid 0-1 technically you would only have ~30gigs of storage instead of the whole 60gigs from the 60gig ssd... Unless your talking about partitioning the 60 in half say one partition as recovery and one as the os.... So theres a complete thing you overlooked with overall space available.

I asked Patrick and Veronica about ssd's a couple episodes ago and what I learned was ssd's are not practical for home use right now. Wait a year or two when the price drops and they work the kinks out. Patrick was talking about a delay with read speeds on the current ssd's and they will be much much faster in the next couple years. Plus more space for less moola.

[master811]

I asked Patrick and Veronica about ssd's a couple episodes ago and what I learned was ssd's are not practical for home use right now. Wait a year or two when the price drops and they work the kinks out. Patrick was talking about a delay with read speeds on the current ssd's and they will be much much faster in the next couple years. Plus more space for less moola.

SSDs are perfectly fine right now, it's just that the cheap SSDs which come with cheap controllers can have severe lag issues causing performance worse than conventional HDDs (but this ONLY applies to writing data, not to reads).

As long as you get the better SSDs and don't skimp performance is fine, just don't bother with the really cheap ones, cos you will end up with worse than what you had before. The main issue at the moment is simply cost relative to how much you can store, rather than performance, assuming you get a decent one in the first place of course.

[tswa]

Well if you run the 30gig ssd's in raid 0-1 technically you would only have ~30gigs of storage instead of the whole 60gigs from the 60gig ssd... Unless your talking about partitioning the 60 in half say one partition as recovery and one as the os.... So theres a complete thing you overlooked with overall space available.

I would run 2 30 gigs in raid 0 so they would add up to 60, or a single 60 in no raid format. I have researched the controllers and that article I posted points you to the drives you would want for quality. I was just hoping somebody could give me some numbers for comparison between 2 30s in Raid 0 vs a single 60.if any one had that data.

[master811]

I would run 2 30 gigs in raid 0 so they would add up to 60, or a single 60 in no raid format. I have researched the controllers and that article I posted points you to the drives you would want for quality. I was just hoping somebody could give me some numbers for comparison between 2 30s in Raid 0 vs a single 60.if any one had that data.

http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-SSDs-RAID-0-A-Case-Study-In-Speed-Take-2/ this is a good article on Raid 0 when using SSDs, although using the 80GB Intel SSDs.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=318&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=12 another one here that uses the OCZ vertex drives.

Basically you are always gonna get a performance boost whenever you use Raid 0, it's just a case of if the performance you get is worth the additional cost. The only thing I'd be worried about is if using raid results in the SSDs wearing out faster (or requiring a full clean wipe sooner due to the issues mentioned in the Anandtech articles) than normal.

Either way looks like a big performance boost over not using Raid 0.

[ArmpitOfDeath]

It's a balance of cost vs performance. X25's in RAID0 would obviously provide the best result, but it's a case of whether you want to skirt this relatively bleeding edge.

I don't have any desktops with SSD's - for my higher-performance systems I use SAS drives + hardware RAID5 controllers - but I have converted all of my Dell Precision Covets to RAID0 SSD using OCZ Vertexes - which I picked on a balance of cost, performance and capacity. And it is definitely a step up over HDD performance while providing a practically usable ~500Gb total storage. As said before, RAID0 is definitely worth doing for the most part - unless your controller really sucks.

[tswa]

cool, the performance values you guys gave me have convinced me that Raid 0 is the way for me to go. the only other aspect is the raid controller. as I understand, they are not all equal. my current controller is Intel ICH9R/ICH10R SATA RAID. with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software/driver. is this an adequate raid controller?