So im looking at getting an/some more SSD(s) (im thinking samsung 850s) for my main rig and basically have 2 choices 1x 1Tb SSDs or 4x 256Gb SSDs in a RAID 5 array The RAID isnt for security its more for speed but will i see much of a speed increase using RAID 5? I've never really worked with it in this kind of environment before. I would assume that as it is writing the data across multiple disks it would be faster, but then it is writing it more than once so not sure if that nulls it. At saying all that, is that what you would do to upgrade on this rig? (see rig in signature) Thanks in advance for any help.
Keep in mind that raiding the SSDs will render trim commands void because trim isn't supported in raid thus in the long run you will see degradation in performance sooner than those running in single SSD mode!.. Yes, you'll get the initial performance boost to begin with but as the SSDs bits start losing life the performance WILL drop sooner than the SSDs are expected to compared to single SSD drive mode... But by all means go ahead and raid them if you want that extra read/write speed!.. IMO I would suggest buying the largest fastest SSDs ( hint Intel 750 pci-e ssd :wink: ) your wallet can cope with and enjoy a pretty long lasting speedy SSD!.. 2 pence worth... Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
This isn't quite true. Intel sorted trim with raid back in x79 I think. However that may only apply to raid 0 and I'm pretty sure it only applies to motherboard based raid and not raid cards. I'm not sure what the current state of affairs regarding trim and raid. But really just get an NVME based drive.
TRIM has been active in RAID arrays for a few generations now. It is through the motherboard's RAID only as that's what the Intel drivers are for. I agree. Just get a PCI-E M.2 drive. The Samsung SM951's are bloomin' quick (2000MBps reads) and don't cost *that* much of a fortune either.
I must have missed the news regarding raid cards supporting trim, never heard that is a thing... [emoji14] Is this at the hardware or software level, just so that I know for future reference?.. Yeah, if your system supports it, get an NVMe PCI-E SSD!.. [edit] IIRC over 2TB GB sequential reads and over 1TB GB on sequential writes, around 300k read IOPS and 100k write IOPS... Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
It requires a bit of both to get RAID with TRIM support. It needs a certain generation, Z77 and X79 (I think) and above for it to work. Psst, I wish we could get 2TB read speeds. It's probably closer to the 2GB region though.
If your Mobo doesn't have a M2 slot you maybe able to add an expansion card, something like the SilverStone ECM20, although IDK how/if it would work as a boot drive, or how it compares price wise.
TBH its been a year since i built this machine and havent really kept up to date. I had no idea PCIe SSDs were so much cheaper now. i seem to remember looking at them when i was origionally building this rig and thinking something to the effect of "You'd have to be minted to be able to afford that" Ill take a proper look at them now though as they look a hell of a lot cheaper now. is samsung still the way to go with the PCIe SSDs? or are there better?
You can update the oroms on older boards to support Trim in raid too. Flashed all my Z68 boards and trim works perfectly afterwards.
You're on X99, so you should be able to support nvme and have the requisite PCI-e lane count. Those Intel nvme drives are super fast - 2GBps as has been pointed out, and the IOP count is seriously ridiculous. That being said, you're able to make a 1TB 4x256GB SATA SSD RAID 0 for about the same money than a 400GB Intel nvme drive. It's a bit redundant going beyond a 3x SSD RAID due to overall SATA bandwidth restrictions, but it's still lighting fast. Of course, if one of the SSDs die then your RAID dies, but that's pretty rare these days.
Just for reference, here's a comparison of a 4x120GB Samsung 840 Pro raid 0 - that I refer to as the 'deathwish raid' option vs the Intel nvme 400GB PCIe drive. Note that the 840 pro 120GB drives are a bit light on writes versus newer / larger drives. The Intel drive is definitely faster (when configured correctly in a compatible motherboard) but, honestly, I can't think of an normal or gaming workload where you would ever see a difference in the real world. Game loads certainly won't be impacted by any significant degree. The 64-thread 4k result is totally artificial and even us power users would struggle to get above just a few threads backed up in a queue at any one time. The Intel drive would really shine in a heavy commercial workload - hosting heaps of virtual machines or a heavily used database. Beyond that you may as well go for capacity if you can accept the risk of raid failure and it works in your build. A 4x SSD raid wouldn't be a great choice for a boot drive for instance, but would be ideal for a steam library or video editing. You could of course offset the risk of failure through different raid types (e.g. raid 5), but then you lose overall capacity and the price difference becomes less noticeable.
Just for reference, here are the ATTO results on default settings. That's the Intel drive, then 4xSSDs, then a RAM Disk (Dimmdrive via Steam) for good measure on the right. ATTO sees the RAM drive but AS SSD won't ... Couple of notes: - That 1600MB/s mark on the SSD raid is an artefact of the overall SATA bandwidth restriction. It's not capped by the drives themselves - Modern / larger SSDs would cap out writes around that 1600MB/s mark as well. These 840 pros just don't have high write speeds - These RAM disk results have always bothered me. RAM disks are fast, no doubt, but they seem inconsistent depending on read/write sizes. I hate inconsistency like that but then the driver may be tuned to common workloads? - Also, in response to one of the OP questions, RAID 5 does provide additional speed. It's not as fast as RAID 0 due to the data redundancy component, but does have the chance to read/write from/to multiple drives to some extent. RAID 5 provides 1 drive redundancy so you really want to be doing that with 3-4+ drives otherwise the hit on overall storage capacity is pretty large
really appreciate all the advice, i tend to really bash my hard drives, generally its because i do physics calculations in 3ds max, (which can result in writing several hundred meg per frame files) I think I'm going to go down the PCIe route. maybe get a second and set up a mirror in the future just for redundancy and have the best of both world. Thanks again.
Sounds good - if you're properly thrashing it and need performance more than space then nvme Intel is the way to go right now. You might find that the prices drop for comparable products in a little while (couple of months?), once Samsung etc get into the game. These nvme drives are bleeding edge still. Just make sure you download the Intel nvme driver. The default windows driver was awful (for me at least).
Just be aware that not all PCIe SSDs are the same. The latest and greatest are the Intel NVME disks. Earlier and probably cheaper versions still have some SATA stuff going on (I think). Either way they definitely won't be as good as NVME based SSDs
Yeah - the others are still using SATA over PCI-e. Easy way to tell is to look at the IOPs count. The SATA ones will usually be around the 90k-130k mark whereas the nvme ones will be more like 420k at the top end.
