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Dual SSD in RAID0 or Fusion Drive for new to me 2011 core i7?

D

drjaymez

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 27, 2008
49
0
Hi all.
I'm replacing my 13"MBP with a mac mini. I just ordered the machine, but I'm not sure what to do for storage.

The main use of the machine is photo/video editing. I do most of my photo work in lightroom (rarely go into photoshop elements). Video is in iMovie, but I want to get into final cut at some point.

I plan to put a 1TB Samsung Evo SSD as one drive, but I'm torn on the other drive. Should I go with 2 of the 1TB SSDs and put them in RAID0 or make the 2nd a 1TB 7200RPM HGST drive and put it in Fusion with the SSD? Basically at a cost difference of about $400. My budget fortunately would allow either, but i don't want to waste money on performance I won't feel.

Other option would be to get a smaller SSD for the mini and add an external thunderbolt enclosure and RAID0 some large fast desktop drives. This would be more expensive, and at the moment, 2TB of storage really is enough to have locally.

Thanks all!
 
To answer my own question a little bit, It sounds like TRIM is not supported across a hardware raid0 SSD array, which may leave me with the fusion setup.

Anybody have experience with Mavericks and RAID0 SSD arrays using TRIM?
 
I am running a 1TB SSD software RAID-0 on a PCIe card in my Mac Pro under Mavericks with no issues. TRIM is applied with "Trim Enabler".

I have run my Mac Mini with RAID-0 hard disks, RAID-0 SSD, Fusion, and standalone disks at various times with no issues. TRIM was applied. Currently I have a Crucial M500 960GB SSD with a HGST 1.5TB 5400rpm hard disk (non Fusion) in the Mini acting as a media server.

TRIM can be enabled for Apple Software RAID disks, but external hardware RAID will not be TRIM supported from the Mac, although the SSDs have their own methods of TRIM built into the controller which may be adequate.
 
hfg said:
I am running a 1TB SSD software RAID-0 on a PCIe card in my Mac Pro under Mavericks with no issues. TRIM is applied with "Trim Enabler".

...

TRIM can be enabled for Apple Software RAID disks.
Click to expand...

This is excellent news. Thanks!
 
Don't fusion or Raid an EVO SSD. It is already some kind of fusion between fast and slow SSD. Raid is best done with 2 identical full speed SSD's like a Vertex, 830, 840 pro or something like that.
 
blanka said:
Don't fusion or Raid an EVO SSD. It is already some kind of fusion between fast and slow SSD. Raid is best done with 2 identical full speed SSD's like a Vertex, 830, 840 pro or something like that.
Click to expand...

Please elaborate or provide a link for more info on that EVO SSD issue... :)

FWIW: I use Samsung 840 Pro and Crucial M4 SSDs in my RAID installations.
 
I'd also appreciate any help on the issue as I'm about to add a 500GB Samsung 840EVO to the Apple-supplied 256GB SSD.

I have read that Fusion is a bad idea (for my particular use - fast access of many large audio files for composition). The article only related to adding an SSD to a standard HDD - but not sure if that applies to 2 x SSDs.
 
raystrack said:
I'd also appreciate any help on the issue as I'm about to add a 500GB Samsung 840EVO to the Apple-supplied 256GB SSD.

I have read that Fusion is a bad idea (for my particular use - fast access of many large audio files for composition). The article only related to adding an SSD to a standard HDD - but not sure if that applies to 2 x SSDs.
Click to expand...

There is little to be gained by creating a Fusion drive out of 2 already fast SSDs, all the data shuffling by the Fusion algorithm would probably slow down the SSD access and promote additional wear on the SSD.

You could concatenate the 2 SSDs into a single large logical drive using DiskUtility/RAID/Concatenate if desired. Or, simply use them separately.



-howard
 
hfg said:
You could concatenate the 2 SSDs into a single large logical drive using DiskUtility/RAID/Concatenate if desired. Or, simply use them separately.
-howard
Click to expand...

Thanks - a new word for me and a seemingly straightforward exercise; and I thought I was going to have to learn about RAIDs :)

Will reading and writing to a second onboard disc be faster than using an external drive with Thunderbolt?
 
People should read more into the idea behind the EVO's. Because of its very attractive price and high tested speed, people forget to read the concept. It is cheap because for 95% it is NOT fast. I really wonder how it will work in a RAID setup. One part of the RAID, the normal full speed SSD takes half of the job, then the other half is written to the EVO, and on idle, the EVO moves the data on that half from the fast cache to the slower storage part. It will work, OSX is very flexible of tying together HD's. It feels very weird though.
 
I am skeptical of your explanation of tlc nand cells and the evo controller. As far as I know the only impact is endurance. It is good to hear if OSX now passed trim commands to raided discs... I wish I could learn a little bit more about that but I dont have a raided pair under osx at the moment. It would be great to hear more on the topic if just to clarify.
 
Built one today :)

I got the 2012 Mini last week and today I got the extra sata-cable from OWC and built a raid0 with 2 of these, 256GB: http://shop.sandisk.com/store/sdisk...?ClickID=a0k00tl90on0klvw9zk5waraova9ov5lklrr

Result:
blackmagic_MacMini.png
 
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