What to do with two identical SSD's ON TOP of a SSD boot drive?

[ThoughtCriminal]

Hi!

I'm a pro visual effects artist doing processor intensive tasks on my AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1100T machine.
It's a GA-880GM-UD2H board with 16GB RAM.
My OS boot-drive is a OCZ-VERTEX3 128GB, and my DATA is stored on a GSPEED Q 3GB (Raid 5).

I just got my replacement Corsair NOVA2 60GB SSD's (The old one failed), but thanks to UPS messing up deliveries around my area, I'm being shipped a second one free of charge

I'm trying to figure out the best way to use the two NOVA2 60GB SSDs to increase my performance (And hopefully not DEcrease it).

It's worth mentioning that currently my Vertex SSD has less than 10GB of free space available, and I'm forced to use a different hard-drive as my Cache drive for software like After Effects, I'm sure this hurts performances.

I'm wondering if connecting both NOVA 2's on a RAID 0 would make them work faster? Perhaps use them solely for the page file and cache location for my editing software?

Any suggestions would be more than welcome!

 

[||Console||]

In raid 0 they will be faster but idk if it would be faster than yojr vertex

 

[hafa]

... connecting both NOVA 2's on a RAID 0 (&) use them... for the page file and cache location for my editing software?

^ This. After Effects, Premier & Photoshop will all benefit.

 

[Knufire]

I'd use one as a page file/cache/scratch disk and the other as more program space if you need it.

RAID0 increases speeds for sequential (large file) transfers. Doesn't matter to most users, but I think it could help quite a bit with pro media usage.

 

[petteyg359]

I think a single SSD will have plenty of STR to be cache/scratch. Putting them in RAID 0 might increase STR, but I doubt it will provide any noticeable benefit over a single SSD. It will increase access times (again, negligible given sub-millisecond SSD access times).
A negligible benefit vs a negligible detriment... Just use the second one as extra space, since you're clearly running out on the main drive. If you're confident the disks aren't going to fail, you might consider converting your Vertex and one or both of the Nova drives to "dynamic disk", then just extending your main drive onto them. It'd be easier than organizing things across three separate disks. If you keep good backups, this shouldn't be a problem, as you can always re-install if a disk fails.

 

[hafa]

RAID0 increases speeds for sequential (large file) transfers. Doesn't matter to most users, but I think it could help quite a bit with pro media usage.

It will also double the available space for the scratch disk; not a bad thing when it comes to rendering long videos in After Effects.

 

[\dev\goat]

A negligible benefit vs a negligible detriment...

Increased STR but lowered DEX ?

 

[Arkaine23]

Be sure to get a decent amount of VIT/hp, in case you want them to tank for your party.

 

[ThoughtCriminal]

Wow, thanks guys for the fast responses! What a fun and active forum this is!

It will also double the available space for the scratch disk; not a bad thing when it comes to rendering long videos in After Effects.

My windows' page file size is 24GB because I have 16GB of RAM - so moving it will free up significant space.

I'll do that - Connect both NOVA2 drives on RAID 0, and use them for cache + Windows pagefile. In case they fail (I'm not a huge fan of them) I don't lose any information/programs.

Having said that - I saw a previous thread about the NOVA2 SSDs having a crappy firmware (Hardly a surprise given my horrible experience with this drive) - should I follow the instructions in that thread?

BTW, I'm totally new to these things and some of the terminology that you guys are using is gibberish for me... I'll go do my homework now.