RAID 0 or single drive and Intel caching

[xmanrigger]

Hey guys, a question about SSD performance.

I finally got home and can work on the Rampage 4E build I am currently doing. While away, I got to thinking about the 2X 120GB Corsair SSDs I got for it to run in RAID 0.
What would offer the best performance/speed; running the 2 in RAID 0, or using a single drive and Intel caching? I havent read a whole bunch about the caching, but it appears to offer a huge performance gain. Or, is there a better config than the 2 I mentioned?

In your opinions, what would be the optimal config? The SSDs are for the OS and apps. There are 2X 3TB HDD for storage so nothing to clog the SSDs but apps and games.

Thanks, 'rigger

[FaRKle!]

RAID0 SSD will be faster than HDD+SSD cache by far.

Don't know if you'd want an OS drive on a RAID0 array though... Also, unless you're doing huge file transfers or loads from your SSDs for your apps you probably won't even notice a difference between a single SSD and RAID0.

[xmanrigger]

So there is no point in RAID 0 on this machine if it is going to be the OS? I have never set up a RAID array before, but I understood that RAID 0 (2X 120GB SSD) would give me 240GB of room, plus speed things faster than a single 240GB drive.

So is that the general consensus? Fuck the RAID 0 and go with a single drive?

[RedRaider]

For the OS, yes. You can run TRIM on a single drive.

I have 2x OCZ Vertex in RAID 0 and will be switching to a single 240GB soon, for my OS...

[FaRKle!]

Originally Posted by xmanrigger

So there is no point in RAID 0 on this machine if it is going to be the OS? I have never set up a RAID array before, but I understood that RAID 0 (2X 120GB SSD) would give me 240GB of room, plus speed things faster than a single 240GB drive.

So is that the general consensus? Fuck the RAID 0 and go with a single drive?

No point in RAID0 for OS drive unless 1-4sec faster boot time is worth the drop in reliability to you. It'll speed things up, just not by any noticable amount of time (unless the reads you're doing are ridiculously huge files/batches).

Personally I'd keep one drive for the OS and system apps (monitoring tools, media software) and another for productivity apps (photoshop, movie editors, MS office). If you really want you can put games on the other one (although I don't find it very cost effective to spend so much $ on an SSD just so you can only notice it when loading a level). I would RAID your 3TB HDDs though. If you're worried about data reliablity and don't need more than 3TB you can put them in a RAID1 array so you get all the benefits of faster read, but better data reliability (write speeds are the same as a single drive).