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Which is better? 2 SSDs or 1 BIG 1TB SSD

R

rjtiedeman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 29, 2010
337
66
Stamford, CT
Now that affordable 960GB SSDs 1TB SSDs are here which is choice for my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 3.33 GHz 6-Core Xeon upgrade to my main system disk?
1. 2 480GB ssds on a Sonnet Tempo Pro (RAID 0)
2. one (1) big 1TB SSD on a Apricorn Velocity X2 PCIE card?

Wouldn't the second choice be safer for data and applications than splitting it in half?:)
 
Last edited:
I'd pick Option 2. It'll be less expensive and still be extremely fast. Option 1. would be faster, but for reliability and ease of installation I'd go with option 2.

Lou
 
Lou,

I agree. I am saving up for a new Pro in 2015. The SSD can can be re-tasked to other machines but the PCI adapter may not be reusable. Now that new macs will not have PCI cards they may become obsolete. Another $300 thing in the basement along with the thousands spent on memory sticks and SCSI cables.

Bob
 
I have two SSDs in a Raid 0 on my PC. Blazing fast performance (@1000 MB/s read). Wasn't too hard to set up on a PC and I imagine it's even easier on a Mac with Disk Utility. I have the drive cloned to an internal SATA which I can boot from in the event of catastrophe. Given current failure rates, you're probably safer with an SSD raid than an average SATA drive.
 
You can also just plug in something like Samsung 840 Evo directly attached to internal SATA port and your done. Should be the cheapest option, performance should still be fine.
 
cube said:
It wears them out. There's research about it saying SSD-oriented RAID implementations are needed.
Click to expand...

Please elaborate, and provide a link to the research.

Read/Write operations on a RAID-0 are no different than those on a single SSD, there are just 2 (or more) drives running in parallel. I see no reason that there would be any additional wear affecting any of the individual RAID-0 drive units over a stand-alone drive.
 
hfg said:
Please elaborate, and provide a link to the research.

Read/Write operations on a RAID-0 are no different than those on a single SSD, there are just 2 (or more) drives running in parallel. I see no reason that there would be any additional wear affecting any of the individual RAID-0 drive units over a stand-alone drive.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess not RAID-0, but the others.

Google 'raid ssd wear'
 
cube said:
Well, I guess not RAID-0, but the others.

Google 'raid ssd wear'
Click to expand...

That looks like it has more to do with parity raids (4,5,6), due to the large amount of file shuffling going on to maintain the parity. RAID0 doesn't do this and since Intel updated TRIM support for RAID0, what's the problem?

I guess shouldn't be doing this on old hardware, but if you're buying anything new, RAID0 shouldn't be a problem.

Here's a link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6161/...ssd-arrays-on-7series-motherboards-we-test-it
 
wallysb01 said:
That looks like it has more to do with parity raids (4,5,6), due to the large amount of file shuffling going on to maintain the parity. RAID0 doesn't do this and since Intel updated TRIM support for RAID0, what's the problem?

I guess shouldn't be doing this on old hardware, but if you're buying anything new, RAID0 shouldn't be a problem.

Here's a link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6161/...ssd-arrays-on-7series-motherboards-we-test-it
Click to expand...


That's what I have been using, RAID-0 with 4 Crucial SSDs. :)
 
wallysb01 said:
That looks like it has more to do with parity raids (4,5,6), due to the large amount of file shuffling going on to maintain the parity. RAID0 doesn't do this and since Intel updated TRIM support for RAID0, what's the problem?

I guess shouldn't be doing this on old hardware, but if you're buying anything new, RAID0 shouldn't be a problem.

Here's a link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6161/...ssd-arrays-on-7series-motherboards-we-test-it
Click to expand...

Mirroring also vulnerable, says the top link.
 
wallysb01 said:
What are you using it on and have you tried to track your preformance overtime? If TRIM isn't working, you should see preformance drop overtime.
Click to expand...


Well, I used to use it on a 9 year old dual G5 PPC, connected with 4 eSATA cables to a Firmtek card, sustaining 750 MBytes/s for copying large data sets.
I also used it as my boot drive.

Now I have the RAID SSD in a Firmtek Multi-Port enclosure and connected to a 4 year old MacBook Pro with 1 eSATA cable, obviously with much lower data rate. However, this allows me to have the images on the RAID and the LR5 data base on the internal half empty SSD. When I had everything on the internal pretty full SSD performance was extremely slow. Just deleting a few hundred images in the finder took minutes. Now performance is quite fast.
 
cube said:
Well, I guess not RAID-0, but the others.

Google 'raid ssd wear'
Click to expand...

There is some interesting information on those links regarding more complex RAID arrays (non RAID-0) using SSDs. :)

However, the OP specifically was asking about RAID-0 using 2 SSDs, and that works great with no physical wear detriment to my knowledge. He should be fine using 2 SSDs in a RAID-0 configuration as he desired.
 
cube said:
It wears them out. There's research about it saying SSD-oriented RAID implementations are needed.
Click to expand...

In 15 years after constant heavy use yes. Will you want something newer by this time? Yes. SHould you worry about it? No. If you worry, get the best quality NAND you can afford. Skip the cheapo toggle crap. Enterprise needs to worry on database use but then you would be buying the longer lasting super expensive slower stuff that Intel makes. You don't load your chassis with Vertex 3's:)
 
1 Crucial M500 would be my recommendation if you want only 1 drive.
Otherwise 2 SanDisk Extreme (not pro) 480g
 
Oh you need a boot disk for 5,1? Single drive. You won't feel much difference on a boot drive for iops or anything else. Even staying on the SATA2 bus will be unnoticeable. 4K randoms are still under 200MB/s for any drive. Boot disk use sequential transfers about 10% or less of the time. The only time you see over 500MB/s anyway. Getting SATA3 card will help you boot .5% faster, maybe.
 
rjtiedeman said:
Now that affordable 960GB SSDs 1TB SSDs are here which is choice for my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 3.33 GHz 6-Core Xeon upgrade to my main system disk?
1. 2 480GB ssds on a Sonnet Tempo Pro (RAID 0)
2. one (1) big 1TB SSD on a Apricorn Velocity X2 PCIE card?

Wouldn't the second choice be safer for data and applications than splitting it in half?:)
Click to expand...

Option 1 would be my choice. The safety thing is just BS and doesn't need to be taken seriously. Two SSDs in RAID0 will give you twice the speed! And later if you would like you can put the OS on one and use the other for project/scratch or whatever.

But I personally wouldn't use anything like a Tempo or a Velocity. I'd just use the standard SATA2 and software RAID if you have the open connections and especially if you're using this as an OS/Apps drive. Something like 95% of OS I/O happens with really small files and those can not be accesses at speeds faster than about 100 or 200MB/s over any modern system. Two SSDs in a SATA2 Software RAID will allow speeds up to about 590MB/s and that's faster than almost any I/O is actually going to occur at. Thus no need for the PCIe card unless you're running out of ports otherwise.
 
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