Two 256GB vs one 512GB

Discussion in 'SSD and HDD storage' started by p0ppa, Apr 7, 2015.

  1. p0ppa

    p0ppa Guest

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    Hi fellow gurus,
    I'm stumbled upon a choice whether to get one 512GB SSD or two 256GB SSDs. all of them will be the Samsung 850Pro series and the funny thing is the price. In my country the 256gb model is $210 and the 512GB model is $420, where the price doubles with capacity on this particular model.

    Ill be planning using 256GB as main os and 256GB as game storage. The question is, is there any downside of partitioning the 512GB to half-half vs having two separate physical drives? (in terms of write cycles, wear etc) I will be having 8 Sata 6GB/s ports and if I use two physical ssds all 8 ports will be utilised along with 6 other mechanical drives

    Thanks for your inputs
     
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2015
  2. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    If you bought two 256GB SSDs, you could set them up in RAID0, then partition them back into 2 x 256GB and have double the transfer rate compared to single drives

    There are risks of data loss if one drive fails in RAID0, no way to recover - but if you are happy with that risk, Id go 2 x 256GB
     
  3. p0ppa

    p0ppa Guest

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    Thanks for fast reply. I was thinking of the same thing, until yesterday I read a benchmark of single ssds vs RAIDed ssds.

    RAID0 SSD theoretically doubles the transfer rate but in actual usage there isn't much improvement to my surprise..
     
  4. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Wow you can actually do that? Is this new to SSDs or did I miss that since I had my last RAID array?
     

  5. Barry J

    Barry J Ancient Guru

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    I went muti SSD none raid I figure spreads the use over the SSD hopefully it will make them last longer and if 1 does fail I don't lose everything

    I am running 5 SSDs OS on 1 games and apps spread across the others backup is done through USB HDD
     
  6. Tree Dude

    Tree Dude Guest

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    With an onboard controller the overhead cuts a lot of the gains. Overall it should still be an improvement, but it is more marginalized in real world applications. A proper RAID controller with some cache would eliminate a lot of the overhead.
     
  7. CPC_RedDawn

    CPC_RedDawn Ancient Guru

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    Its been the way RAID has worked since I was on LGA755 socket if I remember correctly.

    I put two 250GB drives in RAID0 for a single 500GB HDD.

    You can then choose to dice this up into multiple partitions within Windows it self under Disk Management. Takes all of about two minutes to do.
     
  8. p0ppa

    p0ppa Guest

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    thank you all for the replies, I got the 256gb version in the end.. figured out that I probably won't need a high end ssd for storing games as any ssd will be marginally faster than hhd. will probably looking for a cheap 512gb that is priced the same as a 256gb
     
  9. caliskan

    caliskan Guest

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    Keep in mind that putting them in RAID0 doubles your chance of data failure, aka either drive fails and you probably lose everything.
     
  10. IcarusLSC

    IcarusLSC Active Member

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    You have risk of one drive failing as well. Backups are key no matter which you try.

    I personally love raid arrays, great for the stuff I do like encoding, videos, etc. It helps a bit with boot times in games, makes the os feel peppier etc. I buy them on sale and add to my systems with ssds. Beats the much more expensive bigger ones in every way imho. But as I said to start, backups are key no matter which you try ;)
     

  11. shagularpus

    shagularpus Guest

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    RAID 0 does give you a nice performance boost. But I wouldn't be comfortable with less than RAID 0+1.
    I also see no point in partitioning a SSD. Each partition has it's own file system which is a waste of precious 3d vNAND storage.
     

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