SATA3 SSD RAID-0 on SATA2 MOBO

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RaySuave

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I know that people will say that you dont need RAIDed SSD's to get a great performance boost, you will hardly notice the difference, so its a waste of money, and you have a increased chance of losing data. To those points, I say that I want the RAID primarily for more capacity and would rather buy two small drives than one big drive to take advantage of any performance boosts and I do regular OS(Win 7) back-ups already.

I have a Asus P6T Deluxe 2 (SATA2) mobo and have been running two WD raptor drives in RAID-0 configuration for over 3 years. I want to upgrade to an SSD RAID-0 configuration using the same mobo and have a few questions.

Since using SATA3 drives with a SATA2 controller will make the drives behave as SATA2 drives, how close will this RAID-0 config. emulate 1 non RAIDed SATA3 SSD on a SATA3 controller?

Will I be able to use the new RAID-0 TRIM firmware support with SATA3 SSDs and a SATA2 mobo?

Since I don't have any plans of upgrading my mobo soon, would I be better off getting 2 SATA2 SSD's instead of 2 SATA3 SSD's?

Any comments or suggestions will be much appreciated...
 
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Pretty close in sequential numbers, better in random.

No, that needs a newer chipset.

No, SATA3 SSDs are better even in SATA2.
 
The difference between a good SATA II drive and a good SATA III drive is pretty small in terms of actually bettering the experience. Small random performance is far more important, and that's somewhere the Raptors just can't compete. I think the real question is, which SSD would you get? You could always just get one and see how it works out before getting a second one, but I would caution you to skip some of the lower performing SATA III drives, even if you're running them on SATA II.
 
Thanks for the replies....

What is the SSD to get with the best Garbage Collection method in RAID-0?

For now, I'm gonna stay on the look out for SSD sales. Saw a sale for the 128GB Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 for under 100 bucks a few weeks back. If I dont see anything will wait to Black Friday for deals.

After reading more about the new processors released by Intel in April and 7 series mobos, I may be upgrading my processor and board when the prices go down, maybe in Spring 2013, doubt there will be good deals for these on Black Friday since the hardware is so new.
 
trim don't work in raid.
Intel thought they solved it, but it failed and they took down the drivers off their site.
Better days are coming and they will get it together hopefully
 
the corsair performance 3 drives can be ran in raid with zero write loss over time. those drives don't actually decrease in write speed, well ever. even 75% full is the same as 100% full when it came to write speed.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/45...o_128gb_solid_state_drive_review/index10.html

that said, the drives aren't very good, and got outclassed by other drives completely dirty. they were just the most reliable.

to find the best drives for raid, start looking some over, and find their tweaktown review. skip to the page about "Drives with Data Testing", and look for drives with consistent performance levels being restored under the final entry of "Dirty/Empty"

if a drive is still low in Dirty/Empty, it has bad garbage collection. if it rises back up to the top, it has good garbage collection. you'll find most drives have okay garbage collection, it's rare to see something modern that doesn't.

you'll probably be fine with samsung 830, you'll probably be fine with really anything, as long as you select a drive with synchronous nand. you need that to work well with random data. if you don't know if your drive is synch, just ask.
 
Welp, I bought two Samsung 830 128GB for $104 each. My computer is pretty much on
all the time since its hooked up to a surveillance camera, so I should be able to take
advantage of garbage collection while the computer is idle.

infospace said:
trim don't work in raid.
Intel thought they solved it, but it failed and they took down the drivers off their site.
Better days are coming and they will get it together hopefully
Click to expand...

I've been reading that people have confirmed it working.
Do you have a link to this news?
 
Currently there isn't any advantage I can think of running two smaller drives in raid vs a larger drive with the same total GB of data. The bigger drives are almost always faster and the buying the bigger drive is usually cheaper or the same price. Plus you get the advantages of trim, etc...
 
In my testing, two 120GB OCZ Agility 3 drives in raid 0 on SATA2 were noticeably slower than two 120GB Intel 520 drives in raid 0 on SATA3. The drives are close enough in transfer speeds and IOPS, but the SATA3 boost saves a few seconds in certain application loading times. It's not night and day, but I wouldn't want to go back.
 
Old Hippie said:
It won't work on your Asus MB anyway.
Click to expand...

I plan on upgrading my hardware sometime next year...or maybe even Black Friday if the deals are good enough.

serbiaNem said:
In my testing, two 120GB OCZ Agility 3 drives in raid 0 on SATA2 were noticeably slower than two 120GB Intel 520 drives in raid 0 on SATA3. The drives are close enough in transfer speeds and IOPS, but the SATA3 boost saves a few seconds in certain application loading times. It's not night and day, but I wouldn't want to go back.
Click to expand...

How about the difference between two SSDs on SATA2 vs one SSD on SATA3?
 
serbiaNem said:
In my testing, two 120GB OCZ Agility 3 drives in raid 0 on SATA2 were noticeably slower than two 120GB Intel 520 drives in raid 0 on SATA3. The drives are close enough in transfer speeds and IOPS, but the SATA3 boost saves a few seconds in certain application loading times. It's not night and day, but I wouldn't want to go back.
Click to expand...

Those Agility 3 drives use Asychronous NAND versus the Intel 520s Synchronous NAND. That's like comparing a plain-jane Mustang to a Shelby Cobra.
 
Just an update, I ended up canceling my two Samsung 830 128GB orders and getting one Samsung 830 256GB.

I read a few forums where people went from raided SSD's to a single SSD and didnt really notice any performance difference with regular PC use. For what I do, I shouldnt notice that big of a difference either if any.
 
baldrik said:
Those Agility 3 drives use Asychronous NAND versus the Intel 520s Synchronous NAND. That's like comparing a plain-jane Mustang to a Shelby Cobra.
Click to expand...

An unfair comparison to be fair, but two Agility 3s have very similar performance to other Sandforce 2200 based drives.
 
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