General Discussions

@Linesma You mean the TRIM feature is disabled running 2 SSD's in Raid 0? So if you have some early sector wear is that covered by warranty? You probably built yours, the system builders have to abide by their given warranties assuming you can agree on a defect and all things considered, the rep of the builder.


What's the most full you guys have had your SSD's say by percentage? 50-60-75%? I've not seen a suggested ratio for SSD's anywhere. Right now mine has like 700GB free out of 953GB total.

Falcon Warrants every part in my PC for 3 years. Not sure how that might play out if we ever disagree as to how much delay is tolerable and expected tho.







[Edited by element5, 9/25/2014 2:24:41 PM]

After reading your initial post, I got interested in the possibilities of an SSD RAID 0 Array. So I went and did some more research on it. Come to find out that I was wrong. TRIM support IS available for SSD's in RAID 0. Both your mobo's chipset and the controller on the SSD have to support it though. This change happened since the last time I built a RAID array. I am sorry for the incorrect information. An article discussing it can be found here: Link

I got my first SSD in 2010. It was a 60gb Intel. I had Windows 7 installed on it, and by following a Maximum PC article on symbolic links, I had my entire profile and all programs installed to a mechanical drive. With just the Windows 7 install and its average page file size, I was averaging about 85% to 90% disk usage. I was not having any stability issues, at least until my mechanical drive failed and that borked the entire Windows install.

My second SSD was an OCZ 120gb. With this one, I used a stock install on Windows 7 leaving my programs and profile on the SSD. It also would run at about 85% to 90% disk usage. Finally on my current SSD, a 240gb Samsung 830 Pro, with a standard Windows 8 and programs install, I am running about 40 to 50% usage. Both installs were rock solid.

As I said before, you can use your SSD just as you would your mechanical drive. Just do not defrag it. I only replaced my old drives because I wanted more hard drive space. The Intel drive is currently running an Intel Atom "Point of Sale" machine, and my brother is using the OCZ drive in the computer for his step-son. Both drives are running fine.

[Edited by linesma, 9/26/2014 7:31:30 AM]

If you had Windows on the SSD C drive and the SATA drive D or other failed, how did that foul your Windows install? Couldn't just replace the SATA drive or did you just want a fresh install?

I'm reading that Intel added TRIM to its Raid-1 drivers first, and has now added Raid-0 support. Users running SSDs in RAID-0 on 7-series motherboards can enjoy the same performance maintaining features that single-drive users have.

[Edited by element5, 9/26/2014 11:24:58 AM]

What I had done was to move the contents of my user profile to my mechanical drive from the SSD. This profile is normally located at C:\Users\(user-name). As you know, it is the folder that contains all of the account's settings, shortcuts, information, and user folders (ex: My Music) with the files in them. I changed it from its location on the C drive to my D drive. So when the D drive failed, I lost all of my setting for Windows. Here is an article that talks about it: Link

Ahh, ok, and I can understand why, too, bro. Back then those SSD's were a lot smaller and space was at a premium.

This is my first SSD, a 1TB which formatted out to like 953GB, so I have a little breathing room. I wonder what the top end for these drives will eventually become. I was reading that the industry expects the best prices will still be for spinning disks thru 2020. I wonder how the lifespan of each will effect that longterm.

SSD lifespan is now a non-issue for enthusiasts (read: anyone who keeps a drive for less than ten years).

Early units were very fragile. Current units are not, and some can survive having petabytes of data written to them before they start to choke.

Maybe you want to read this: Link

Thanks for the information. It was interesting how their performance slowed before they failed. Also the fact that the Samsung drive is still running is awesome. They are the easiest to get where I live in Thailand!

I would be surprised if the 2020 speculation held true. Just in taking a look at costs for a 32GB or 64GB SSD a few years ago you find proof that users were shelling out costs that rival the largest SSDs at present. The only thing that will keep higher prices on the SSDs are improved technologies in the devices and the exponential expansion of memory capacity (that I guess is ultimately just another improvement to the device). However, the cost per GB and/or TB will steadily decline making the HDD as attractive of a purchase as a floppy drive.

In regards to SSD and/or SSD RAID performance; I am on my second rig with a SSD RAID 0 configuration. The first system was two 128GB Crucials, and the current system is two 500GB Samsung 840 Evos.

The current system was just built last week, so I cannot speak to long term performance with the current configuration. However I was running the previous pair two+ years with zero issues. From day one it was a vast improvement over the disk drives (mind you I never owned a Raptor like element5). I also had an i7 3930K managing everything, so that may have had a large part in the performance realm as well.

My previous rig consisted of the two SSDs in RAID 0, a single 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA II HDD for OS backup, and two 3TB 7,200 RPM SATA III HDDs for my Steam, Origin, etc. libraries. The two raid configs communicated without issue as well. As an aside, the downside to that system... the bottleneck that existed between my CPU and the 3TB HDDs... this is why my current build has the two 500GB SSDs in RAID 0 for games managed by a 256GB SSD containing the OS. That way, at least for my higher demand titles I can kill that bottleneck... and believe me it does!

**By the way... if anyone is asking themselves why I went with two 500GB SSDs in a RAID rather than the cheaper single 1TB SSD option... two words: poor planning! My intention was to limit have the 265GB run the OS (and it does), the 500GB drive foster my higher demand game titles, and a final 6TB HDD for remaining games, storage, etc. I quickly discovered that the 500GB was eaten quickly by what in my opinion was a relatively small amount of games. So I already had one in hand... I just picked up another and striped the drives.

[Edited by AdmiralP, 10/9/2014 7:16:50 AM]