Gamer + ssd? its been too long since i've upgraded T_T

[dtiao7eb]

hey guys...and gals...

so i recently built a computer...(listed below) and i realised my hdd is ....meh...

i was thinking about changing to an SSD. I'm just worried about "life span" for the SSD. mixed readings from google...

i'm not sure which route to go. I'd really love for a faster performance in hard drive speed. but not if i have to replace the harddrive every 5 years.

should I just use the SSD as a boot drive? and then use my SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB for everything else? or would it be ok to just use the SSD for everything including daily gaming such as "WoW" and "Starcraft 2" and "Diablo 3" (in the future) (I also do some video/photo editing...)

also another question is... i'm not fully understanding the sata raid system. is there a way to seperately see each harddrive? for example I have 3 hard drive and in my computer i can see each individual drive. in the past i've always (somehow) made them in to one hard drive.

thanks for the help guys

 

[salvage-this]

i'm not fully understanding the sata raid system. is there a way to seperately see each harddrive? for example I have 3 hard drive and in my computer i can see each individual drive. in the past i've always (somehow) made them in to one hard drive.

In windows drive manager you can link other drives together to make a bigger drive. This is not raid. In raid you link the drives to be striped together (raid 0). This creates a raid array. Your computer will be able to see the array but not the individual drives. To the computer your array is a whole new drive not separate drives.

Hope that makes a bit more sense.

 

[dtiao7eb]

yeah i did some outside reading too.. i think i understand it...

now the question is... is SSD sata 3 worth it? or should i go with a 10000 rpm sata 3 hdd?

or if i raid 0 a few ssd together? raid 0 basically spread the information onto 2 or more sdd/hdd correct? which technically means its going at the speed of X the amount of harddrives you raid together? so if i raid 0 4sdd 100gb sata2 it should technically be faster than one single ssd sata 3??

confused? i think i am hahah

 

[salvage-this]

now the question is... is SSD sata 3 worth it? or should i go with a 10000 rpm sata 3 hdd?

Well that depends on what you are using it for. Boot drives are the only thing that I would recommend an SSD for. If you are looking for storage then I would get the 10000 rpm drives. The other option is one of the Seagate momentus XT drives. they have a partition of ssd with a 7200 rpm drive. They have very fast speeds and lots of storage space. Note NOT for raid. They can only be used as single drives.

or if i raid 0 a few ssd together? raid 0 basically spread the information onto 2 or more sdd/hdd correct? which technically means its going at the speed of X the amount of harddrives you raid together? so if i raid 0 4sdd 100gb sata2 it should technically be faster than one single ssd sata 3?? (

well it kinda works like this...

*****---> Drive 1 --------
*****|*****************| Max Speed from Drive 1
Info-- ****(striping)***** -----(reconstructed data from the array)-----> Info
*****|*****************| Max speed from Drive 2
***** ---> Drive 2 --------

Ok so you spread the information just like you stated. When you read it the raid array can read from each source (each hdd limited by their respective sata port) so you get the combined speed of the hdd read speed together. so if you got 70kb/s from each drive you could get 140kb/s read speed from your raid array. You will not get exactly double but it will still be a significant boost in speed from a single drive. The more the drives in your array the faster your read speeds will be. More sata ports with less information for each sata port to read.

I hope that cleared it up a bit.

 

[87dtna]

After 5 years you'll pretty much be replacing ANY drive because it will be very antiquated. So just get the SSD. The OCZ vertex 60gb or larger, or the intel 80gb or larger drive's are the best ones to get right now.

 

[dtiao7eb]

Yep thanks for the info...

Another question (hopefully the last)

if i were to raid 0 4 60 ssd can i still have one HDD 1tb for storage? or once i start raiding i can't have another seperate storage drive?

 

[87dtna]

As long as you have an open sata port left, absolutely. But actually, for some reason 3 drives is the sweet spot for raid 0. Just FYI.