[creecher]

if im gonna spend 100 dollars on a wd 1tb caviar black, and 300 on an ssd, why dont i just buy 3 extra cb's and raid0 with 4 of them?
would that be faster?
if so, would 3 still be faster?
or is this just really excessive

edit: for $400 worth of storage, i could
almost get 6 500gb cb's
4 1tb's
5 640 gb's
5 750 gb's best value with storage options?

[thideras]

No number of mechanical drives will come close to touching the random access times of a SSD. I was hitting 7-8ms with 4x WD Black 1tb drives in RAID0. SSD drives will do 0.1ms.

[elbweb]

Originally Posted by creecher

if im gonna spend 100 dollars on a wd 1tb caviar black, and 300 on an ssd, why dont i just buy 3 extra cb's and raid0 with 4 of them?
would that be faster?
if so, would 3 still be faster?
or is this just really excessive

Most of what you're paying for with the SSD would be unneeded if you have space for something like that, so yes, I would recommend that If you can deal with the (physical) space. You'll lose out on access times/random access still, but I'm sure your read/write speeds would be better.

I would get the big array if you have the space.. but you can see in my sig, i did both (got the intel 80gb drive for my laptop, and a 20x1,5tb array for my server :-P)

[Ben333]

Yes, a stripe with those would be faster than one. Maybe even a lot faster, probably not close to that of a solid state drive though. Also, if I were you I'd run those in RAID 5 in case one were to die unless you have backups.

[creecher]

Originally Posted by thideras

No number of mechanical drives will come close to touching the random access times of a SSD. I was hitting 7-8ms with 4x WD Black 1tb drives in RAID0. SSD drives will do 0.1ms.

what all do random access times affect? like how long it takes before it starts reading, or how long in between data finds?

win 7 starting faster and programs being faster are all that i want, so would access times affect that?

i have a haf 932, so i do believe im good to go

[thideras]

Originally Posted by creecher

what all do random access times affect? like how long it takes before it starts reading, or how long in between data finds?

win 7 starting faster and programs being faster are all that i want, so would access times affect that?

You should notice a very large speed increase in general computing, gaming, etc. The drives are very "snappy". AKA: You open Firefox and BAM, it is open. The "seek times" are so small that it is almost instant.

[creecher]

Originally Posted by thideras

You should notice a very large speed increase in general computing, gaming, etc. The drives are very "snappy". AKA: You open Firefox and BAM, it is open. The "seek times" are so small that it is almost instant.

sorry if im just dur da dur today,
but are the ssd's snappy like this, or the cb's or both?
or door #3 the low access times?

[Ben333]

Thideras is referring to SSDs I believe.

[thideras]

Originally Posted by creecher

sorry if im just dur da dur today,
but are the ssd's snappy like this, or the cb's or both?
or door #3 the low access times?

SSD's. Sorry for the confusion.

[johan851]

what all do random access times affect? like how long it takes before it starts reading, or how long in between data finds?

win 7 starting faster and programs being faster are all that i want, so would access times affect that?

Random access times affect every single read or write the HDD performs. If it needs to read a file, it needs to seek for it. If it needs to read ten files and they're not next to each other (as is often the case) it has to seek for each of them. Same deal with a write. When Windows starts up, it has to seek and load hundreds of files. A program has to do the same kind of thing.

If you want Windows to start up faster and programs to be faster, I would argue that access time is the primary bottleneck. You should read this article (and start on this page): http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=20

To give you one example, say the hard drive needs to load up ten 10MB files. This is a generous test case for the mechanical drive, because the number of files is usually larger and the size of the files is usually smaller.

Four mechanical drives in RAID 0:
Assume sequential read speed of 400mb/s, seek time of 8ms.
Each file takes 0.025ms to read (10mb / 400mb/s)
Each file takes 8ms to find
Total time to read all files: 0.025ms x 10 + 8ms x 10 = 80.25ms

One SSD (Intel X25-M):
Assume sequential read speed of 250mb/s, seek time of 0.1ms.
Each file takes 0.04ms to read (10mb / 250mb/s)
Each file takes 0.1ms to find
Total time to read all files: 0.04ms x 10 + 0.1ms x 10 = 1.4ms.

The SSD, in this example, will do the operation 57 times faster, or in about 2% of the time of the RAID 0 array. That's a BIG difference - and remember, that example favors the mechanical drives! The problem is that for most operations, drives are so fast at sequential reading that access time dominates. It's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it illustrates my point.

You'll see a similar story if you look at the article and find the graphs for random read/write of 4kb files. Compared to a Raptor, the X25-M performs random writes about 30 times faster, and random reads almost 100 times faster.

[solstice]

Anantech article seem strange. He blames the mechanical hard drive for multi-minute boot time. Yet, my machine spend more time in bios boot than in loading up windows. My windows boot time is about 30s to 40s using RAID0 hard drive. I am using Windows VISTA 64 bit too! SSD will not improve that number significantly. I google a Youtube video with OCZ SSD. It was only able to boot in 20s. That is mainly because the person have a very clean setup with basically nothing loaded. I do not optimize my start up apps because boot time is already fast enough for me.

[solstice]

Forgot to mention the bios boot is slow because of my ASUS motherboard. I have no idea why it spend so much time before memory checks. It spends more time on that than on 3Ware firmware load. Then again, I start calculating the time when I click the power button and the LCD seem to take more than 5 seconds to display the screen.

[johan851]

Anandtech might be calculating boot time after BIOS loads. I'm not sure. Boot time isn't a good way to compare different systems because it varies so much, but it is an interesting metric for two hard drives on an otherwise identical system. Of course, there are other much more important benchmarks.

[Mjolnir]

If you wanna count 'boot times' I spose you'd do it from the windows loading screen or something. Because the rest beforehand is the bios working out wtf its doing.. I know mine takes ages. A lot longer than my older budget board (M2NMX-SE). My girlfriends family comp (piece of crap really) takes longer to boot overall, but the bios zooms through because shes' got no dedicated gpu, only 1 hdd, and 2 sticks of ram. Nothing fancy, no extra crap.

my old old 800 mhz celeron took a fair while to boot, but mainly due to windows boot time (98/xp). Then my next upgrade was to a 3500+, 1gb ram, etc. And it was 1-2 minutes (longer after time). And that suits me fine. Anything less than 2 minutes is acceptable for me, It really doesn't bother me at all.

It'd be nice if things loaded a bit faster though, like people said 'snappy', where my firefox from a fresh start takes a good 5-10 seconds to open for the first time. But it's still something I'm willing to live with.

...Back to topic. I'd go the larger space option. Like others said you wouldn't get those types of access/seek times, but do you really need it? Is it necessary to get that 'instant' feel?

Some people probably wouldn't even notice a significant enough jump from a decent mechanical drive to a SSD. Go the extra storage =D.

[johan851]

...Back to topic. I'd go the larger space option. Like others said you wouldn't get those types of access/seek times, but do you really need it? Is it necessary to get that 'instant' feel?

I think it's the largest bottleneck for the instant feel. So...yes. Quite possibly.

Some people probably wouldn't even notice a significant enough jump from a decent mechanical drive to a SSD.

My guess is that this is an upgrade that would improve "feel" significantly more than most. Nothing else in the system takes milliseconds to get something done - everything else is on the order of 1,000 - 1,000,000 times faster.

[KTE]

Originally Posted by creecher

if im gonna spend 100 dollars on a wd 1tb caviar black, and 300 on an ssd, why dont i just buy 3 extra cb's and raid0 with 4 of them?
would that be faster?

Overall, far faster, far more consistent and far more reliable. Let alone the far higher capacity. Although striping isn't something you do if you seek reliability.

Even 3x striped are far too quick for one desktop enthusiast SSD in real usage.

Now if you talk prosumer/server market SSDs, then the ball game changes completely. Those things are fast and reliable, too good for anything on the desktop... and come with a similar far higher price too.

[johan851]

Overall, far faster, far more consistent and far more reliable. Let alone the far higher capacity.

Can you quantify how the array would be faster, more consistent, and more reliable?

[Badbonji]

Smaller files are faster generally with an SSD, but for copying and writing very large files, such as movie files, the Raid 0 mechanical's superior read and write usually win out. And as most files are small rather than large, an SSD will be quicker in general usage.

[visbits]

Just so everyone knows, your NEVER going to see a performance increase with a read speed over 100MB/s for any thing general. The SSD's get to the data way faster and can read multiple things at once which is why they are the Hype. For large amounts of storage and the ability to just move big files back and forth raid will excel over and SSD but nothing will ever complete for raw seeks.

[MongGrel]

SSD's for an operating system are fantastic for an O/S just for the seek times, I'll get there yet but am still waiting.

Still running two RAID arrays here myself that are pretty fast they wouldn't touch a SSD MLC like the new intel ones out for an O/S I'm sure though.

Had a screw up lately and had to buy something I shouldn't have, the wife still a bit cranky, if nothing else they keep upgrading the SSD's Ill pick up some slightly slower ones in the future.

Can only drive the prices down over time I guess, I'm still working ok with whats in here I guess.