I've got a 512 Pro and a couple of the 1TB Evo's in my PC and the pro is a bit quicker at random I/O when testing with CrystalDisk Mark. In real world performance you wouldn't notice any difference. I would go for the Evo if it gives you more GB for the money.
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Raid 0 in 2012 Mac Mini
- Thread starter jboyd710
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I've got a 512 Pro and a couple of the 1TB Evo's in my PC and the pro is a bit quicker at random I/O when testing with CrystalDisk Mark. In real world performance you wouldn't notice any difference. I would go for the Evo if it gives you more GB for the money.
I understand that the performance gains are minimal. I would RAID 0 simply because of the single large volume you get in return.
There are no 2TB ssd's that don't cost a fortune, however 1TB ssd's have gotten very affordable to the point where you can have 2TB of internal flash storage for just under 750. I remember my dad buying a 1TB flash drive a few years back for over 1200. How far we've come!
I would take take the slightly lower performance for granted (we're talking about milliseconds here: it would still crush every spindle hdd out there) in exchange for twice the storage.
My two cents at least.
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To the quick - I had 2 x 240 OWC SSD in my Mac Mini 2.0 quad server. They were striped and by chance, one drive failed after 3 months. Things do happen so I can't be upset with OWC.
However, I was fortunate enough to have a backup and nothing was lost and I went and used one of the 240 drives that was working as my boot drive.
Striping drives internally is a risky business and requires regular backups. As well, you will have to be prepared to re-enter your Mini to make the change if needed when a drive fails.
Mirroring is not such a big deal because if one drive fails, consider the other one the master and decide whether to replace the failed drive or continue on with an external back up of sorts.
Presently, I also have a 2.6 Mac Mini quad with one Samsung 840 pro 512. The rest is external and I am quite happy with this arrangement. To each their own. (BTW, the 2.0 Mac Mini is now with XBMC installed over Ubuntu and works excellent for that HTPC duty).
However, I was fortunate enough to have a backup and nothing was lost and I went and used one of the 240 drives that was working as my boot drive.
Striping drives internally is a risky business and requires regular backups. As well, you will have to be prepared to re-enter your Mini to make the change if needed when a drive fails.
Mirroring is not such a big deal because if one drive fails, consider the other one the master and decide whether to replace the failed drive or continue on with an external back up of sorts.
Presently, I also have a 2.6 Mac Mini quad with one Samsung 840 pro 512. The rest is external and I am quite happy with this arrangement. To each their own. (BTW, the 2.0 Mac Mini is now with XBMC installed over Ubuntu and works excellent for that HTPC duty).
Each to their own I guess, that's the beauty of the mini at least you do have choices.
"A fortune" and "performance" are both relative terms. I've got three 4-year old minis, a server with 10TB of drives, a base mini with only an upgrade to 4GB RAM, and a base mini with the 4GB upgrade plus a 120GB SSD. The latter two minis are used as entertainment centers.
As entertainment centers, running primarily Plex, performance of the disk drive is not a factor and I can't tell the difference between the two minis. The SSD does eliminate a moving part and I did it as an experiment. Cost was nominal since I was replacing a failed drive anyway.
The server might be faster with SSDs, but it's mainly streaming large files or accessing databases in the background (Calendar and Contact servers, Time Machine) or reference materials (online documentation, paperless household) for which far more time will be spent in study than in retrieval. The real killer in this case is that 10TB of SSD is really unaffordable. And even if I were given the money it would probably be better spent by replacing the minis with shiny aluminum models!
The 10TB of drives are all independent (no RAID or joining) but this has never been an issue in practice, and it surely makes backing up easier.
As entertainment centers, running primarily Plex, performance of the disk drive is not a factor and I can't tell the difference between the two minis. The SSD does eliminate a moving part and I did it as an experiment. Cost was nominal since I was replacing a failed drive anyway.
The server might be faster with SSDs, but it's mainly streaming large files or accessing databases in the background (Calendar and Contact servers, Time Machine) or reference materials (online documentation, paperless household) for which far more time will be spent in study than in retrieval. The real killer in this case is that 10TB of SSD is really unaffordable. And even if I were given the money it would probably be better spent by replacing the minis with shiny aluminum models!
The 10TB of drives are all independent (no RAID or joining) but this has never been an issue in practice, and it surely makes backing up easier.