Trim or raid?

[griff30]

I am planning a build with SSDs for a gaming rig. I want 256GB for the OS and the few Steam games I will play. The question is whether I sould use two 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 or just one 256GB?
I understand I won't have Trim with RAID0 but I will have a performance advantage.
Is there a software analogous to trim for RAID on SSDs?
Thanks and sorry if it was asked before.

 

[DisrupTer911]

garbage collection?

 

[Falcon_CMH]

As long as you tune your system for SSDs, no swap file, turn off superfetch service etc. Then you will be mainly reading your SSD and TRIM doesn't make a big difference at all. RAID 0 will be approx. twice as fast on the reads as a single SSD so IMO its definitely worth it. I haven't ran a system I use w/o RAID for many many years now even with the old spinners. But if you go RAID and you cann't easily rebuild your system I recommend you back it up to a spinner just in case the RAID fails.

 

[Neb]

Superfetch reads data into cached memory....how does that reduce writes?

 

[griff30]

As long as you tune your system for SSDs, no swap file, turn off superfetch service etc. Then you will be mainly reading your SSD and TRIM doesn't make a big difference at all. RAID 0 will be approx. twice as fast on the reads as a single SSD so IMO its definitely worth it. I haven't ran a system I use w/o RAID for many many years now even with the old spinners. But if you go RAID and you cann't easily rebuild your system I recommend you back it up to a spinner just in case the RAID fails.

Thanks!
I was actually thinking of using a 32 GB thumb drive for my swapfile and internet explorer cache file or 2x 16 GB USB2 thumb drives in raid0 for my swap file. Should I use an aftermarket disk defragger like diskeeper w/ hyperfast?

 

[Abula]

As long as you tune your system for SSDs, no swap file, turn off superfetch service etc. Then you will be mainly reading your SSD and TRIM doesn't make a big difference at all. RAID 0 will be approx. twice as fast on the reads as a single SSD so IMO its definitely worth it. I haven't ran a system I use w/o RAID for many many years now even with the old spinners. But if you go RAID and you cann't easily rebuild your system I recommend you back it up to a spinner just in case the RAID fails.

It really depends though, in most cases the sequential writes do almost double up, but the randoms.... not much of an upgrade, the lactency also gets wrost with raid, not saying its not worth it completely, just its not as good as people think raid is. Overall for people transferring huge amount of files i would say it good, or people that deal with a lot of sequential based apps, but the usual benefits more on random, so my advise on ssd is just go as big n fast as your budget allows.

Now if you still want to try raid with ssds, go with something with garbage collection like OCZ vertex3 or crucial c300 and avoid intels. I still personally prefer a single ssd over a raid.

 

[Neb]

Don't do any of those options, they're no good.

Make sure you buy SSD's with a good garbage collection and then leave some free space on the raid. 15-25% free will make up for the loss of TRIM, generally speaking.

Now if you still want to try raid with ssds, go with something with garbage collection like OCZ vertex3 or crucial c300 and avoid intels. I still personally prefer a single ssd over a raid.

Why are you saying avoid Intel's? They're expensive, but it seems that their GC is good and their reliability is somewhat confirmed as exceptional.

I say somewhat confirmed as that one french retailer's return rates nearly match up with Intel's failure rate claims.

 

[griff30]

Sooo basically, with 256gb leave 50-60gb free. No problem.

 

[Abula]

Why are you saying avoid Intel's? They're expensive, but it seems that their GC is good and their reliability is somewhat confirmed as exceptional.

I say somewhat confirmed as that one french retailer's return rates nearly match up with Intel's failure rate claims.

Sorry i didnt specify, if you see my sig, im only an intel ssd fan, no issues at all. My recommendation to avoid intel goes in line to what you suggested, in terms of going with Garbage collection type of ssd instead of Intels SSD that relay on Trim to maintain performance (to what i know intel doesnt have any GC), this purely on the wish of the OP to go with raid, if it was a single ssd i would still recommend intel out of their reliability and no issues in my personal experiences.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Thanks!
I was actually thinking of using a 32 GB thumb drive for my swapfile and internet explorer cache file or 2x 16 GB USB2 thumb drives in raid0 for my swap file. Should I use an aftermarket disk defragger like diskeeper w/ hyperfast?

Never use a defrag on SSDs.

The 20% free space is a must for best performance.

Stay away from the Sandforce controller SSDs IMO. Go Intel or Crucial.

If you have 6GB+ of memory just turn the swap file off. SSDs can handle ~5 GB daily writes I wouldn't worry to much about your temp files/internet cache unless you do a lot but even then I would use a fast spinner over a USB drive unless you get a very fast USB 3.0 flash drive that can read 100K+ and write 80K+

Once again TRIM/GC is not really necessary on a drive you write stuff to only once and mainly read. I have 2 RAID 0 systems one with Intel and one with Crucial and they are as fast as day 1 no degredation.

If your interested here is a store that sells the fastest USB 3.0 flash drives cheaper than many slower ones: www.cj-technology.com

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Superfetch reads data into cached memory....how does that reduce writes?

Never said it reduces writes. It frees your memory up for program use increasing PC speed because the SSD can read the data superfetch reads into/chews all your memory up with fast enough that superfetch actually slows down your PC.

 

[Neb]

Sorry i didnt specify, if you see my sig, im only an intel ssd fan, no issues at all. My recommendation to avoid intel goes in line to what you suggested, in terms of going with Garbage collection type of ssd instead of Intels SSD that relay on Trim to maintain performance (to what i know intel doesnt have any GC), this purely on the wish of the OP to go with raid, if it was a single ssd i would still recommend intel out of their reliability and no issues in my personal experiences.

From what I've read, Intel has always had one of the most aggressive GC of all the SSD makers. Do you have any source stating Intel has no GC?

Tech report review of the X25-M G2 states it has GC
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/2

My personal experience with both a X25-M G1 and a X25-E indicate that they have GC.

Never said it reduces writes. It frees your memory up for program use increasing PC speed because the SSD can read the data superfetch reads into/chews all your memory up with fast enough that superfetch actually slows down your PC.

As long as you tune your system for SSDs, no swap file, turn off superfetch service etc. Then you will be mainly reading your SSD and TRIM doesn't make a big difference at all.

You stated that by "tuning the system, turning off the swap file and turning off superfetch etc" you would "Then...be mainly reading your ssd...". That's about as close as you can go for stating it reduces writes without actually stating so.

OP: Disable windows defrag if it's not already automatically disabled by win7, set a size for your swap file if you feel like it (don't disable it though...that's unnecessary) and call it a day. As long as you leave the free space GC will take care of the rest.

I disagree that superfetch causes an actual performance decrease to the end user if it's enabled with a SSD. "Slows down the PC" show proof of actual performance impact please .

Falcon_CMH: Why buy SSD's if you're only reading from them? Are you using your Raid 0 SSD array as a giant read cache? I ask that because I beat the crap out of my SSDs with writes

 

[lovemyram4x4]

Never use a defrag on SSDs.

The 20% free space is a must for best performance.

Stay away from the Sandforce controller SSDs IMO. Go Intel or Crucial.

If you have 6GB+ of memory just turn the swap file off. SSDs can handle ~5 GB daily writes I wouldn't worry to much about your temp files/internet cache unless you do a lot but even then I would use a fast spinner over a USB drive unless you get a very fast USB 3.0 flash drive that can read 100K+ and write 80K+

Once again TRIM/GC is not really necessary on a drive you write stuff to only once and mainly read. I have 2 RAID 0 systems one with Intel and one with Crucial and they are as fast as day 1 no degredation.

If your interested here is a store that sells the fastest USB 3.0 flash drives cheaper than many slower ones: www.cj-technology.com

Diskeepr w/ hyperfast isn't going to defrag your SSDs, it will just give you what trim/GC would give you (that's what hyperfast is all about, the normal diskeeper functions can still be use for your mechanical HDDs if any are also installed).

 

[drescherjm]

Should I use an aftermarket disk defragger like diskeeper w/ hyperfast?

No. I would not defrag your SSDs.

BTW, there are several free defraggers that do the exact same thing as hyperfast. Some of them have had that feature years ago..

Two of these are MyDefrag and Defraggler.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

From what I've read, Intel has always had one of the most aggressive GC of all the SSD makers. Do you have any source stating Intel has no GC?

Tech report review of the X25-M G2 states it has GC
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/2

My personal experience with both a X25-M G1 and a X25-E indicate that they have GC.





You stated that by "tuning the system, turning off the swap file and turning off superfetch etc" you would "Then...be mainly reading your ssd...". That's about as close as you can go for stating it reduces writes without actually stating so.

OP: Disable windows defrag if it's not already automatically disabled by win7, set a size for your swap file if you feel like it (don't disable it though...that's unnecessary) and call it a day. As long as you leave the free space GC will take care of the rest.

I disagree that superfetch causes an actual performance decrease to the end user if it's enabled with a SSD. "Slows down the PC" show proof of actual performance impact please .

Falcon_CMH: Why buy SSD's if you're only reading from them? Are you using your Raid 0 SSD array as a giant read cache? I ask that because I beat the crap out of my SSDs with writes

Well there is proof enough that MS says to do it and actually someone out here posted to a blog claiming MS OS install does it on fast enough SSDs (I have always had to turn it off manually even though I always uses the latest and fastest SSDs at the time I buy them and RAID 0 always). You'll have to search I lost track of the thread.

I mainly use my SSDs for read only. I have no use to write to them under normal PC use. I have a SATA III 1.5 TB WD 7200 RPM 64MB Cache drive for data like movies, pictures, etc. And I have a domain server with many terabytes of data for backup and family storage.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Here I found the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2...rives-and.aspx for turning off superfetch.

 

[drescherjm]

^ link does not work.

 

[rive22]

Do the RAID 0, and get a cheap kingston 16GB SSD for ALL of your temp files folders & page file.

Internet browsers are best installed portable entirely in a RAMdisk. 1GB is plenty. Even 512GB is sufficient. Net will be blistering fast.

 

[Neb]

I believe the link he meant to post was this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Will Superfetch be disabled on SSDs?
Yes, for most systems with SSDs.

If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn’t have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.

Initially, we had configured all of these features to be off on all SSDs, but we encountered sizable performance regressions on some systems. In root causing those regressions, we found that some first generation SSDs had severe enough random write and flush problems that ultimately lead to disk reads being blocked for long periods of time. With Superfetch and other prefetching re-enabled, performance on key scenarios was markedly improved.

They state it'll be automatically disabled, then go on to talk about how they had to re-enable it for the crappy first generation SSDs that had terrible performance. Where does it say there's a significant performance impact from leaving it on? Yes, reading from a SSD is slower than reading directly from memory but I don't believe that the speed difference is slow enough to cause significant performance reduction from Superfetch.

 

[Forceman]

The reason they recommend turning off Superfetch for SSDs (actually, it should be off automatically) is so that Superfetch can concentrate on the mechanical drives, where it can have the biggest impact. Memory used by Superfetch is immediately freed back to the system when needed, so it makes no sense at all to disable it to keep system memory free - remember kids, free memory is wasted memory. Likewise, just leave the page file on the SSD, unless you are space constrained (ref that same Microsoft post if you want details).

Do not defrag an SSD.

And my advice is get the 256GB drive - the speed increase of a single SSD over a spinning drive is great enough to make RAID unnecessary for most users.

 

[rive22]

1 SSD is suitable, for most users. And will give ANY user a big grin on their face. But after you have one for a while, you'll see the desire for more performance.

Remember, most users is the outside world. [H]ardForum isn't most users.

 

[Neb]

It was fun transferring between my SSD and my 8 drive raid 6. Poor SSD held up well but ended up being the bottleneck

 

[Falcon_CMH]

OK so here is proof Win 7 doesn't turn off superfetch or prefetch with a new install on 2x Crucial C300 256GBs RAID 0. Now hopefully the mis-information out here on the forums will stop once and for all. Here are the screen shots my registry and my drive speeds (these were the fastest drives at the time, I can provide the same proof with Intel X-25M 160GBs RAID 0 too):
Drive Speed

Registry 3 is enabled 0 is off

 

[Red Falcon]

It was fun transferring between my SSD and my 8 drive raid 6. Poor SSD held up well but ended up being the bottleneck

I've seen this happen and apparently HDDs in large RAID arrays can occasionally beat a SSD in raw transfer speed. Though it is rare, it can happen.

SSDs are nice though, especially for laptops due to lower heat and energy required to run as well as a huge speed boost.

 

[Forceman]

Windows 7 didn't do any of the SSD 'optimizations' I'd read about when I installed it on an Intel 320 yesterday. Prefetch and superfetch are at 3 in the registry, should I turn them off?

Also, what happens when you have SSDs and mechanical HDDs co existing? In my case I have the 80GB 320 for the OS and a 1TB Samsung F3 for large programs and storage. Should superfetch be on or off? BTW, I have 16GB of RAM, so I don't mind superfetch using some of it...

Just leave it alone. At best it helps, at worst it doesn't do anything.

 

[Forceman]

Nevermind

 

[Abula]

Back to the RAID vs single drive:

40GB 320 = Read: 200MB/s Write: 45MB/s

80GB 320 = Read: 270MB/s Write: 90MB/s

Will the RAID make up for the difference (with 2x40GB), considering the increased failure risk, lack of trim and supposing you weren't using a hardware RAID controller?

I would go with the singe drive, the sequential writes and reads are not used that much, unless you copy a lot of files to small drive or do a lot of encoding/editing. I prefer stability and low risk over higher sequentials, so i would chose the 80gb over raid0 40s. As an extra option, if you were to get by with 64gb also check Samsung 470 64 GB Solid State Drive MZ-5PA064 seq reads 250 MB/sec, seq writes 170 MB/sec.

 

[Brahmzy]

Solution: Just RAID0 2 80's.

Your welcome.

 

[Neb]

OK so here is proof Win 7 doesn't turn off superfetch or prefetch with a new install on 2x Crucial C300 256GBs RAID 0. Now hopefully the mis-information out here on the forums will stop once and for all. Here are the screen shots my registry and my drive speeds (these were the fastest drives at the time, I can provide the same proof with Intel X-25M 160GBs RAID 0 too):

Did you consider that a RAID array is not presented to the OS as a SSD? Most times you can't even read SMART values from a RAID array from windows directly, which would lead me to believe that windows would have know way of knowing it's a SSD array. When you check the device properties of the drive within device manager, does it show the SSD drive manufacturers or does it show something along the lines of "intel raid" or similar?

 

[Copyright]

I had 2 intel G1 80gb drives in RAID 0 and loved them for a couple of years. The GC did its job but sometimes I helped thigns along using Tony Trim which did help. I am happier with my C300 though. Overall Windows feels more snappy even though my peak throughput is not as high I still get better scores in AS SSD and Windows Experience Index. What I like about running hte single drive is Win7 takes over and does what is needed for an SSD. When in RAID the OS does not know its an SSD drive and does not make those changes. So you are stuck researching what needs to be turned off etc and you get to read a lot of debates about what is right and what is wrong etc..

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Windows 7 didn't do any of the SSD 'optimizations' I'd read about when I installed it on an Intel 320 yesterday. Prefetch and superfetch are at 3 in the registry, should I turn them off?

Also, what happens when you have SSDs and mechanical HDDs co existing? In my case I have the 80GB 320 for the OS and a 1TB Samsung F3 for large programs and storage. Should superfetch be on or off? BTW, I have 16GB of RAM, so I don't mind superfetch using some of it...

I turn off/set to maunal the superfetch service instead of the registry changes but worse case change those registry entries to 0.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Did you consider that a RAID array is not presented to the OS as a SSD? Most times you can't even read SMART values from a RAID array from windows directly, which would lead me to believe that windows would have know way of knowing it's a SSD array. When you check the device properties of the drive within device manager, does it show the SSD drive manufacturers or does it show something along the lines of "intel raid" or similar?

Like I said it doesn't turn off superfetch with SSD drives in RAID 0 that are faster than a single SSD drive no matter why. So people have to manually like I have told them. Bottom line know your technology and don't spread mis-information. This thread was asking about RAID was it not?

 

[Neb]

Like I said it doesn't turn off superfetch with SSD drives in RAID 0 that are faster than a single SSD drive no matter why. So people have to manually like I have told them. Bottom line know your technology and don't spread mis-information. This thread was asking about RAID was it not?

You seem to be confusing posts across different threads, where in this thread did I say that Superfetch would be turned off with a RAID 0? This thread was actually about whether Trim was worth losing over switching to a RAID.

Hell, I've been of the position that one should leave Superfetch ON regardless of the type of drive being used. That being said, I've seen enough instances where registry entries and actual windows settings don't always match up that I personally would take any registry entry with a grain of salt.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

I am an enthusiast who happens to enjoy learning the ins/outs of my hardware and software and tuning it to its full potential. And IMO Superfetch is junk since day 1 and still is. I shut the entire service off so I don't even have to mess with the registry. And you were questioning my post above is why I posted back to you in this thread. And I am fully aware in all 3 threads what and who I post to.

 

[Forceman]

I tried clean installing Windows 7 with only the SSD and optical drive connected - no mechanical hard drives.

Defrag schedule was NOT disabled/SSD is visible in the defrag list.
Prefetcher and superfetch were still at '3'

So as far as I can tell Windows 7's automatic SSD optimizations are BS?

Is the SSD selected in the drive list? The defrag service will be scheduled, but at least on mine (which was a clone install) the SSD is not even in the list of drives that can actually be scheduled. Just being visible on the first screen doesn't mean it is going to be defragged.

Like so:

 

[Strmtrper6]

Likewise, just leave the page file on the SSD, unless you are space constrained (ref that same Microsoft post if you want details).

It isn't just space. It chews up your drive fairly quickly.

I have my pagefile on my Agility and I am already down to ~60% health.

I'm not saying it is a bad idea, as I enjoy the performance benefit when I run out of memory. Just be prepared to add some wear and tear.

 

[Forceman]

It isn't just space. It chews up your drive fairly quickly.

I have my pagefile on my Agility and I am already down to ~60% health.

I'm not saying it is a bad idea, as I enjoy the performance benefit when I run out of memory. Just be prepared to add some wear and tear.

I have the pagefile on my X-25M and it still has 99% life - so I don't know that those numbers really mean anything.

 

[drescherjm]

I have the pagefile on my X-25M and it still has 99% life - so I don't know that those numbers really mean anything.

Intel has a lower write amplification than an Agility. Also the % of the drive that is used would also have an effect.

 

[Strmtrper6]

I have the pagefile on my X-25M and it still has 99% life - so I don't know that those numbers really mean anything.

How much ram do you have and do you run very memory intensive apps?

I only have 2GB and I can easily go over that all day.

I'm at 3916 cycles, 3100GB written.

 

[Falcon_CMH]

Leaving the page file on SSDs is very bad advice IMO. Either shut it off or put it on a RAM Disk. Also shutoff the superfetch service permanently. And if you have a RAM disk try your temp/tmp and Internet Browser cache on the RAM disk its nice and takes wear off your SSD too. I use QSoft RAM Disk from my research its the best. and its free if you don't want to pay.