SSD drives: Single or Raid 0?

Cameron203 · Post by **Cameron203** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:53 am

I am buildiing a mini PC mostly for gaming and streaming. I have searched through countless benchmarks and reviews and it seems like the crowd is about 50/50 divided on whether SSD drives in Raid configuration 0 provide any real world benefits. Acccording to the benchmarks, they seem to be a little more than twice as fast in Raid configuation 0 than in single. For the application that I am using them for, in your opinion, should I opt for the single 500 gb drive or the two 250 gb drives in Raid 0? Thanks.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:58 pm

i ran 2 SSD in raid-0 for awhile, the boot time is going to be longer because the raid controller BIOS has to run on startup, modern SSD's are so fast now that you will not notice a difference with everyday usage, only benchmarks on sequential transfers IMO, but that is assuming copying from 1 SSD to another SSD.

another issue is potential for data loss in raid-0, make sure to do regular backups

i vote for single SSD or a few of them.

Cameron203 · Post by **Cameron203** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 7:32 pm

Thanks Mark. I'm going to just run single SSD then I'm only interested in real world results.

Post by **Philip** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 7:38 am

A single SSD that is twice as large will always be better imho, because you get the benefit of wear leveling, and lower write amplification (they work much better/faster/longer if they're not over 70% full). With today's SSD speeds, I'll always prefer a larger drive from a reputable company (we run Intel 730s in the main SG server). If you have to raid them (server applications), I'd do Raid 1 (mirror) just for safety and redundancy before any other type.

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 11:37 am

Ya, go for 1 SSD, as large as you can afford. Take a look at the Samsung 850 EVO, looks like a pretty good drive.

Cameron203 · Post by **Cameron203** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 4:57 pm

That's exactly what I purchased. A 500 gigger, its for a mini PC in my living room. Basically for streaming movies, games and occasional web browsing.

morbidpete · Post by **morbidpete** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 4:18 pm

Philip wrote: (they work much better/faster/longer if they're not over 70% full).

I always manually make the partitions 30% smaller for that exact reason during the OS install (Shift+F10, then use diskpart)

Post by **Philip** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:38 pm

That's cool... I don't do that anymore, I just look at the total writes the drive supports and spare sectors.

Different vendors actually leave different percentage of reserve sectors... Intel 730s have a lot more spares than most other brands. Samsung 850 Pro specs boast a lot of total writes and 10 years warranty as well.