RAID 0 with SSD's for OS + Games

[Abominator]

Now I understand that a lot of people have been recently putting their OS and a game or 2 on an SSD for faster boot times and game loads. I have done some research on RAID 0 and the fact that if 1 drive goes down then all your data become corrupted. However if you just running with the single SSD if it goes down then you'll be in the same situation regardless but nonetheless have 2-4 SSD's does slightly increase the chance of one of them failing within the standard timeframe of a single SSD. This leads me to several questions.

Is it possible to have your OS on several SSD drives in a RAID 0 setup?
The more drives the greater the speed and the risk, should I opt for 1x128gb SSD or 4x32gb SSD's in RAID 0 or 2x64bg SSD's in RAID 0?
If I do opt for 4x32gb 2x64gb will the increased read and write speeds be noticeable compared to a single SSD?

Thank,

[Saithes]

Yes it's possible, but on just about every SSD you lose TRIM support. OCZ's have their own custom firmware with Garbage Collection that helps a bit along with some others featuring custom forms of TRIM but the lack of it on most all major SSD's will/can severely limit performance and capacity especially in a RAID setup.

Intel SSD's can do a separate form of TRIM and passthrough as long as you're on an Intel RAID Controller but even that isn't up to par compared to the real deal in the OS.

Another thing to mention is that you do indeed lose everything if even one drive goes down or is unable to be written to, but if you run a single SSD you also have the chance that if it does indeed begin to fail or have any issues being written to that you can always copy/read from it regardless.

[Abominator]

It appears I will have to do further research on this subject before I make my final decision. Also i'm generally new to computers in general and have been trying over the last few months to build as much knowledge as possible to aid me when I make my computer eventually, because of this I had no idea that I drive can show signs of failing prior to failing, I assumed it would be like a fuse and just burn out all of a sudden. I would definetly say that i'm leaning further towards the single SSD OS drive at the moment because this.

Also even though the primary data storage harddrive would remain unaffected by the failure of an OS RAID 0 configuration would it be wiped clean when I reformatted the RAID 0 with the working SSD's or could I circumvent the wipe by removing the main harddrive before reformatting and simply put it back in after?

Also thanks for the quick reply.

[ispano]

Intel SSD's can do a separate form of TRIM and passthrough as long as you're on an Intel RAID Controller but even that isn't up to par compared to the real deal in the OS.

Oi, not this again. No, they don't. TRIM cannot pass through a RAID controller to a RAID array. Intel RST drivers finally got a fix to allow TRIM to be passed to a SINGLE drive on the controller when it was in RAID mode. Because when you turn on RAID for say two drives in RAID0 and a single SSD, the SSD is still considered in RAID, just as a single drive. That was what they fixed, to allow TRIM to pass to that single drive.

[Djinni]

Oi, not this again. No, they don't. TRIM cannot pass through a RAID controller to a RAID array. Intel RST drivers finally got a fix to allow TRIM to be passed to a SINGLE drive on the controller when it was in RAID mode. Because when you turn on RAID for say two drives in RAID0 and a single SSD, the SSD is still considered in RAID, just as a single drive. That was what they fixed, to allow TRIM to pass to that single drive.

So the upshot of which is what?

TRIM only works on the first drive in the array?

[ispano]

Pretty much, if the drives are in an array of 2 or more drives, TRIM does not work.... period. The problem was, that when in RAID mode, single drives, ie not in a multi drive array, were still treated as such due to the controller being in RAID mode. The change allows TRIM to pas to those single drives, not an array.

[Djinni]

Pretty much, if the drives are in an array of 2 or more drives, TRIM does not work.... period. The problem was, that when in RAID mode, single drives, ie not in a multi drive array, were still treated as such due to the controller being in RAID mode. The change allows TRIM to pas to those single drives, not an array.

Ahhh ok ;-)