# Corsair SSD vs VelociRaptors in RAID 0



## jevery

I'm getting ready to upgrade the slowest link in the chain.  Originally was going to put in a Corsair P128 MLC Internal Solid State Drive.  Now, after reading a number of reviews, I'm concerned about deteriorating performance over time and slower transfers as the drive fills.  I'm now leaning toward a pair of VelociRaptors in RAID 0.  Price between the two is close at $375 for the SSD vs $400 for the VelociRaptors plus the VelociRaptors will give me 600 GBs vs 128 for the SSD.  Which would you chose?


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## funkysnair

its a personal decision... do you require the extra space?

the question is "performance or storage?"

i bought an intel 80gig ssd and sold my raptor and 1tb drives, now i have 80gig intel ssd and 40gig cheap asse drive for music


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## Bodaggit23

VelociRaptors are over rated and over priced. 

Look at these hard drive benchmarks, updated daily.
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.php?cpu=WDC+WD3000HLFS

This $55 Seagate hard drive outperformed the VelociRaptor.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 

Or, if you're brave, this $55 Samsung drive performed second only to an Intel SSD
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB


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## funkysnair

unfortunatly most people are missing the point with ssd's

"its the random read/writes" that make these ssd drives fast, sure you tell people that the write performance on the intel ssd i have got is poor 70mb but the random read/write basicly puts the convention drive to shame

granted them f3 drives are very very good they will not stand a chance next to a ssd...

the op needs to decide on what he wants

is it drive space or performance that you require?


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## funkysnair

high end hard drive benchmarks

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html


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## ganzey

Bodaggit23 said:


> VelociRaptors are over rated and over priced.



they are also loud as hell


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## jevery

funkysnair said:


> i bought an intel 80gig ssd and sold my raptor and 1tb drives, now i have 80gig sata and 40gig cheap asse drive for music



No, I don't really need the space.  I currently have 42 GB used of 423 available and really have everything I need installed.  It's a tough decision.  I think I'd love the extremely fast read times and silent operation, but don't want to be disappointed if in six months I'm using an SSD that's filled to 80% capacity and performing no better than the VelociRaptors would.  I'm really after performance.  Am I interpreting your post correctly - you no longer have the SSD?


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## funkysnair

dam i still got mine.... (woops just realised i put 80 gig sata instead of ssd)

i want another!!!

my pc boots 3 times faster and shutsdown in like 3 seconds, everything is snappy as hell

you buy ssd you need to research, there are very poor drives out there!!


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## jevery

funkysnair said:


> dam i still got mine.... (woops just realised i put 80 gig sata instead of ssd)
> 
> i want another!!!
> 
> my pc boots 3 times faster and shutsdown in like 3 seconds, everything is snappy as hell
> 
> you buy ssd you need to research, there are very poor drives out there!!



 I've been researching - maybe so much that I've almost talked myself out of it.  The Corsair seems like a good middle ground for the MLC SSDs.  Wish SLC drives were cheaper.  Sounds like you're happy with yours.  How long have you had it now?


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## funkysnair

i have had it a few months, very happy with it!

it hard to make the choice i know, its alot of money for something so small...

the look on my face when the box arrived-£200 for that? it is a little bigger than my mobile phone lol.


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## jevery

OK, I think I'll stick with the SSD as what I'm primarily after is faster load times.  Thanks all


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## funkysnair

let us know what the increase is like


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## ganzey

just get an ssd for boot and windows files, and another hdd for storage


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## G25r8cer

funkysnair said:


> granted them f3 drives are very very good they will not stand a chance next to a ssd...




Agree the F3's are Great mechanical drives for the price. Picked up my 500gb F3 for $45 shipped. But, YES SSd's will put mechanical drives to shame. In my opinion, they are way TOO expensive right now and the $ : GB ratio sucks 

I personally would settle on an F3 for now, as I have done. Save your money and wait until ssd's get better and cheaper. Which they WILL


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## Bodaggit23

ganzey said:


> they are also loud as hell



Mines not that loud. I can hear it crunching a bit, but it's far from the loudest drive I've had.

What case do you have?


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## lubo4444

ganzey said:


> just get an ssd for boot and windows files, and another hdd for storage



+1.  Most of the people who have SSD use it only to boot their systems and they use hdd for storage.


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## jevery

New Intel X25-M 80 SSD

Boot time - button to desktop from 1:30 to :45

Disk Data Transfer Rate Score from 6.0 to 7.7












Average Read from 107 mb/s to 222











Wow, single best upgrade I've ever done.  Glad I went SSD.  Thanks funkysnair


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## Bodaggit23

Nicely done. The X25 is the best SSD on the market atm, so no surprise really.

I'm planning a RAID 5 with three of these soon. 

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB $54.99

I'll post my results and see where I'm at. I'm not ready for SSD yet. Too expensive.


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## Gabe63

Great information! Did you clone your old drive, how was the install?


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## Shane

Wow....ive been thinking of getting an SSD,That exact intel one...the cost was putting me off but looks like its well worth it!


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## jevery

Did a fresh install of Windows 7, installation of the drive was no different than a regular SATA hard drive.

Single Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB






Four Barracudas in Raid 0+1






Intel SSD






Arrived with outdated firmware 2CV102HA - Update to current 2CV102HD, (TRIM support), wasn't difficult.  Burn ISO image to CD, boot with the CD, run DOS update program.  

Write is slower than my RAID array, though I figure that as far as responsiveness is concerned, read speed is all that really matters.

It seems worth the money after using it, IMO  :good:


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## funkysnair

jevery said:


> New Intel X25-M 80 SSD
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> Boot time - button to desktop from 1:30 to :45
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> Disk Data Transfer Rate Score from 6.0 to 7.7
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> Average Read from 107 mb/s to 222
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> Wow, single best upgrade I've ever done.  Glad I went SSD.  Thanks funkysnair



Hey im glad you like it- the performance is good isn't it?


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## Twist86

The real question that always comes to my mind is does it open 100 firefox tabs faster?


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## Geoff

It would be useful to me since I transfer lots of RAW camera files back and forth, which usually take 5-10 minutes as I have hundreds of 25MB files that need to be moved.


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## funkysnair

Twist86 said:


> The real question that always comes to my mind is does it open 100 firefox tabs faster?



no the real question is, do you dress up as a woman on a weekend?


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## Flaring Afro

I just bought the intel yesterday  Gonna just put my current 500gb drive in the second slot of my asus. I'm going from vista on a 5400rpm to win7 on a ssd. Why asus decided a gaming laptop should have a 5400 drive is beyond me...


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## G25r8cer

Flaring Afro said:


> Why asus decided a gaming laptop should have a 5400 drive is beyond me...



Less power usage and less noise


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## funkysnair

G25r8cer said:


> Less power usage and less noise



and less performance


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## 87dtna

SSD's are awesome.  The ACCESS time it's whats very low on SSD's.  .1 ms access time VS 10+ ms for spinning drives.

I had two 500gb seagates in Raid 0, a single SSD was faster reading and writing, and of course demolished the access time.  Boot up is what was noticeably faster, nearly 1/2 the time from POST to desktop.  And once you see the desktop, it's done loading already LOL.  Playing games, you spawn the fastest with an SSD, and just everything in general comes up faster when you click on it.

You can always do what I did too, if down the road one drive seems to be slow, later on you can always buy another and raid 0 the two SSD's.  My three SSD's in raid 0 pull 545 mb/s read and 465 write speeds.


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## jevery

Twist86 said:


> The real question that always comes to my mind is does it open 100 firefox tabs faster?



Yeah, I'm guessing it would.  Hey what happened to the busty avatar?  Put it back please. 



Flaring Afro said:


> I just bought the intel yesterday  Gonna just put my current 500gb drive in the second slot of my asus. I'm going from vista on a 5400rpm to win7 on a ssd.



You're gonna love it.  Some good info here.  If it comes with firmware version 2CV102HA, update to 2CV102HD.



funkysnair said:


> Hey im glad you like it- the performance is good isn't it?



After conversing with you, I got to comparing specs between the Intel and the Corsair and decided that the Intel was the way to go.  Wish I could have got a 120 Gb version though.  Still, everything essential is loaded and I've only used 27 Gbs so far.



87dtna said:


> My three SSD's in raid 0 pull 545 mb/s read and 465 write speeds.]



Now that's serious fast.


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## 87dtna

jevery said:


> Now that's serious fast.




Yeah with an I5 at 4ghz also everything pretty much just pops up instantly LOL.
My I7 860 should be here tomorrow   Guy said it does 4.7ghz at 1.50 Vcore on air WITH hyper transport on.  Sweetness, superpi contest here I come!  Watch out I7 920's!

With SSD's in Raid it almost literally doubles the transfer rates.  With spinning drives, you get like 1/2 again for another drive.


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## Gooberman

omgs i want some ssd drives now


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## Twist86

jevery said:


> Yeah, I'm guessing it would.  Hey what happened to the busty avatar?  Put it back please.



I dunno I like this one, besides I get to see her every day on another forum 



You know one thing I would love to find is a program that cleans all the crap from Windows Vista/7 aka remove all the crap you will never use such as devices/printers/scanners etc. I checked out the vlite method but its way over my technical skills


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## newgunner

IMO. I would choose the SSD and get a cheap 500GB HDD for storage. Sure sustained speed is arguable between your options but the snappiness you get from a SSD is irrefutably more enjoyable. I would never EVER think twice about an SSD over a HDD for a main drive ever since i experienced it first hand.


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## G25r8cer

funkysnair said:


> and less performance



Thats a given


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## G25r8cer

24 samsung ssd's in raid

Rips a 700mb file in .8 seconds 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs


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## Twist86

Yeah but no one is going to buy that many SSD drives


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## Bodaggit23

Twist86 said:


> Yeah but no one is going to buy that many SSD drives



True, and quite frankly, if they need that many, with a dual CPU board to show off their stuff, I don't think I would buy one anyway.


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## Gabe63

If you were going to buy 1 Intel 160 G SSD would you buy 2 80 G SSD's and run them in Raid? Are there any reliability concerns with this? Would this cause other issues (I have no examples of what issues these might be). 

I am going to go SSD and was considering the 160 just so I can run most programs on it at higher speed instead of just the OP system. I also figure my favorite game, NFS Shift, would have no delay between races.


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## 87dtna

I would run raid, how much reliability issues would you have with an SSD?  They are much more reliable than standard spinning drives.


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## Gabe63

Thanks, so Raid wont cause program issues inherent to Raid? Sorry, I dont know much about Raid. It seems like the price for 2 80 G SSD's are about the same as 1 160 G.


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## 87dtna

I don't have any problems...??


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## Flaring Afro

87dtna said:


> I would run raid, how much reliability issues would you have with an SSD?  They are much more reliable than standard spinning drives.



I think the high expense causes people to think they are unreliable. With hard drives, most people only buy good brands that are a little more. With ssd's, it's the opposite (because good brands are A LOT more usually).


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