# Samsung 850 evo 2 500gb raid 0 vs 1tb evo?



## Rehmanpa (Oct 13, 2017)

Title states it all, which will be better, 2 500gb 850 evo running raid 0 or a single 1tb 850 evo? I think with the raid 0 they would be the same size as the 1tb but twice as fast??

Edit: will be using for main system disk (it will have only one drive and it'll also be the boot drive). Idk if booting off of raid is bad or not.


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## londiste (Oct 13, 2017)

2x500 in raid0 will be faster for sequential read/write. theoretically twice as fast as single drive, in reality (much) less than that. random r/w not really faster.

raid0 will come with a huge risk to data, if one of the drives die you lose all the data.
depending on implementation, usage patterns and such, raid might introduce additional writes on disks which is not that good for ssd-s.

you are on a relatively new hardware. if you really feel you need faster drive, just go for m.2 ssd like samsung 960 evo.


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## PerfectWave (Oct 13, 2017)

I think raid 0 will saturate bandwith of sata6 so u gain few performance vs 1tb. ifu need more speed yes u have to go m2 ssd as written by londiste


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## londiste (Oct 13, 2017)

PerfectWave said:


> I think raid 0 will saturate bandwith of sata6 so u gain few performance vs 1tb.


one ssd (close to) saturates sata3 bandwidth. two drives are connected to two different sata3 ports so there is double the bandwidth to play with


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## PerfectWave (Oct 13, 2017)

sorry u are completely right!


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## Rehmanpa (Oct 13, 2017)

I only ask this because it's  $50 cheaper to buy two 500gb drives vs 1 1tb 850 evo. If one drive failed dies that mean the data on the working drive would be gone to?


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## Kursah (Oct 13, 2017)

In a RAID 0, if one drive fails you lose all data. Each of your drives has 50% of the data. So while you have speed you have no redundancy or parity. That's the risk of performance.

I'd go with a single SSD and call it a day, sure if you lose the single drive you lose your data too, but you double your risk of failure with a RAID 0 dual-drive config as each drive has a chance to fail. You also come close to doubling performance and would save money for about the same amount of space. Comes down to what you want to do, if the performance boost is worth it, and if you're comfortable with the risks involved. 

If it were me, I'd still go single drive...but RAID 0 can be fun to play with on non-critical applications.


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## Sasqui (Oct 13, 2017)

Someone here did do two SSD drives in RAID 0, they showed a bandwidth over 1,000 MB/s!

Only problem is I can't remember who or what thread I saw that


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## puma99dk| (Oct 13, 2017)

I agree with @Kursah no point in RAID0 with no redundancy, then u would need 3x500GB if u want RAID, if it's the speed u want from RAID why not just enable RAPID mode and call it a day?


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## Rehmanpa (Oct 13, 2017)

Guess I could always just buy 1 500gb drive and get another one later and use it as storage or sonething. It seems raid 0 wouldn't be worth doing but raid 5 with 3 might be.


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## Gasaraki (Oct 13, 2017)

Rehmanpa said:


> Title states it all, which will be better, 2 500gb 850 evo running raid 0 or a single 1tb 850 evo? I think with the raid 0 they would be the same size as the 1tb but twice as fast??
> 
> Edit: will be using for main system disk (it will have only one drive and it'll also be the boot drive). Idk if booting off of raid is bad or not.



"Better" means different things to different people. In terms of performance the RAID 0 will be better but then you have twice the chance of a hard drive failure. For me I back up stuff so I'll take the performance any day.


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## Kursah (Oct 13, 2017)

Rehmanpa said:


> Guess I could always just buy 1 500gb drive and get another one later and use it as storage or sonething. It seems raid 0 wouldn't be worth doing but raid 5 with 3 might be.



RAID5 would provide parity, but you'd gain no write performance, only read. It would however allow a single drive to fail and the array to not totally kick the bucket due to maintaining parity between the three drives to ensure two drives have enough to rebuild the third. Keep a spare drive handy though, so you can swap it in and rebuild the array ASAP. You don't want to wait and risk a second failure.

RAID 10 with 4 drives would offer some increased write and read performance, but you'd only have 50% usable space (it is two RAID1 arrays, which is a 1:1 mirror, in a RAID0).

Not sure what you'd use to handle the RAID processing, but I don't recall a consumer-grade mainboard solution that offered RAID10.

@Gasaraki also brings up a good point, backups. Definitely something to consider depending on how critical the data and your time to start from scratch again are.


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## Rehmanpa (Oct 13, 2017)

Kursah said:


> RAID5 would provide parity, but you'd gain no write performance, only read. It would however allow a single drive to fail and the array to not totally kick the bucket due to maintaining parity between the three drives to ensure two drives have enough to rebuild the third. Keep a spare drive handy though, so you can swap it in and rebuild the array ASAP. You don't want to wait and risk a second failure.
> 
> RAID 10 with 4 drives would offer some increased write and read performance, but you'd only have 50% usable space (it is two RAID1 arrays, which is a 1:1 mirror, in a RAID0).
> 
> ...


I think what I'm going to do is buy either 1 850 evo or 2 850 evos and run them as separate drives. The 1tb is just too expensive. Trying to justify spending $280 on SSDs though xD


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## RejZoR (Oct 14, 2017)

Go with single 1TB. RAID0 is fast, but is just calling for failure. RAID0 is worth when you can't go any higher for single drive. If you can, go to desired capacity with single drive, go with that. Much less problems, less chances for failure and less complications overall.


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## puma99dk| (Oct 14, 2017)

I got one 960 EVO 250GB for Windows 10 and two 850 EVO's 1TB for gaming no raid I don't feel the need for it.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 14, 2017)

Sasqui said:


> Someone here did do two SSD drives in RAID 0, they showed a bandwidth over 1,000 MB/s!
> 
> Only problem is I can't remember who or what thread I saw that


That'd be me and my 850 Pro's in raid0.







If you think SATA 6gbps is gonna hold 2 SSDs back, then look at 4 of those in RAID0. (found on ocn http://www.overclock.net/t/1639921/u-2-ssds). Until I put my own drives in raid0 and then investigated further (3,4 drives), I believed stata 6gbps will limit the performance of sata ssds in raid0, just cause everyone kept telling me that nonsense. 2 drives reach 1100mb/s, three do up to 1600mb/s, four come close to 2000mb/s. Sequential read/write only, but that's raid0 limitation not the sata limitation.


Spoiler: 850 x4 vs 960 x2










 


It has to be said that raid0 only increases sequential read/write, random numbers stay about the same. I'd say with 850Pro's in Raid0 my system is maybe slightly more responsive if I'm really doing a lot of bandwidth-dependent things at the same time but a single SSD is still more than enough for a home user. If you have a choice I'd go with 850 evo 2x512 raid0 cause it's free perfromance, whether you'll be able to see it will be very limited though.


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## RejZoR (Oct 14, 2017)

Like I've said, unless you need raw throughput (basically copying MASSIVE data sequentially) you don't need or want RAID0. It's fast but volatile and tends to complicate things like HDD/SSD status monitoring, software support for backup etc. It's just not worth it unless you absolutely need it for specific tasks. And even there, I'd reconsider M.2 NVMe drives. Most even basic ones reach 1.5 GB/s and have slightly lower latencies because of more direct connection than SATA.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 14, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> Like I've said, unless you need raw throughput (basically copying MASSIVE data sequentially) you don't need or want RAID0. It's fast but volatile and tends to complicate things like HDD/SSD status monitoring, software support for backup etc. It's just not worth it unless you absolutely need it for specific tasks. And even there, I'd reconsider M.2 NVMe drives. Most even basic ones reach 1.5 GB/s and have slightly lower latencies because of more direct connection than SATA.


yes but they also tend to be more expensive,have less warranty (960 evo 3 years - 850 evo 5 years, 960 pro 5 years - 850 pro 10 years) and they have massive overheating problems at their rated speeds unless you cool them with a radiator, which adds to the cost. It's basically a trade between one and the other having both pros and cons. RAID0 splits data in half, which means 50% less TBW for each drive in the array actually.


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## RejZoR (Oct 14, 2017)

I think write wear is irrelevant for today's drives unless you scrub 100GB of data every single day. And even then we are talking roughly 37TB a year. 850 Pro has warranty of 300TB I think. That's 8 years of daily 100GB writes just to reach the warranty limit. Like I've said, most 850 Pro's do 1PB rather easily. That's 1000TB. That's 27 years of 100GB daily writes. In 27 years, I'm sure even my 2TB SSD will be greatly outdated and only something people would get in entry level laptops so far in the future (I doubt they'll even have SATA anymore).

This write wear anxiety is really annoying and it would be better if no one even mentioned it ever. I managed to shake it off, but I'm sure it's hard when you pay 500 bucks for a drive and you worry it'll wear out too soon. Well, don't worry at all. I have my 850 Pro 2TB for 2 years, 2 years and a half maybe. It has 13TB writes and I use it as my main drive for everything and I don't babysit it at all. I just use it like I did my old HDD. That makes it almost impossible to wear it out during normal usage. Not to mention, we're talking 100GB write scenarios EVERY single day without exception. Which is entirely unrealistic. You may install 2x massive 50GB games, but then you'll be busy playing them for next several days in which you'll maybe write only 1GB every day. Each day this happens, the write average goes down.


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## Rehmanpa (Oct 14, 2017)

I actually just ended up getting a single 500gb 850 evo drive. It was $155 at newegg (sale ends today). I think it'll be sufficient for the system I'm putting in (building a dedicated VR machine with a ryzen 1700 that'll also render videos for me) so I'm thinking that 500gb will be enough for sony vegas 15, windows 10, and some VR games plus steam and oculus home. I have a 1tb 850 evo that I was going to use for my main rig (4790k) but I might put the 500gb in that and the 1tb in the other once singe my main rig will have like 8 hard drives in it. 

Either way thank you all for your advice. Seems like if I did end up buying another 850 evo I'd be better off leaving it as its own separate drive since it's fast enough on it's own and that way if one failed i'd only lose half my data instead of all my data. If I really needed more performance I would have bought an NMVE ssd.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 14, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> I think write wear is irrelevant for today's drives unless you scrub 100GB of data every single day. And even then we are talking roughly 37TB a year. 850 Pro has warranty of 300TB I think. That's 8 years of daily 100GB writes just to reach the warranty limit. Like I've said, most 850 Pro's do 1PB rather easily. That's 1000TB. That's 27 years of 100GB daily writes. In 27 years, I'm sure even my 2TB SSD will be greatly outdated and only something people would get in entry level laptops so far in the future (I doubt they'll even have SATA anymore).
> 
> This write wear anxiety is really annoying and it would be better if no one even mentioned it ever. I managed to shake it off, but I'm sure it's hard when you pay 500 bucks for a drive and you worry it'll wear out too soon. Well, don't worry at all. I have my 850 Pro 2TB for 2 years, 2 years and a half maybe. It has 13TB writes and I use it as my main drive for everything and I don't babysit it at all. I just use it like I did my old HDD. That makes it almost impossible to wear it out during normal usage. Not to mention, we're talking 100GB write scenarios EVERY single day without exception. Which is entirely unrealistic. You may install 2x massive 50GB games, but then you'll be busy playing them for next several days in which you'll maybe write only 1GB every day. Each day this happens, the write average goes down.


Yes but the warranty and thermals are a concern, you seem to conveniently forgotten. Anyway, the OP seems to have chosen.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 25, 2017)

I know this thread is dead, but I just wanna get some things straight as I clearly made a mistake due to my lack of knowledge. Contrary to what I believed, RAID0 does make a difference for random read/write. The only thing which it doesn't seem to improve is 4K data at QD1, which is harldy indicative of any practical,real-world workloads at all. 

This is a SATA3 SSD (XPG 950 3D MLC)







Those are my two 850 Pro's







2x faster than a single SATA3 SSD at 512K random, 44% faster in 4K QD32 write, 10% faster in 4K QD32 read. Only thing that doesn't seem to be affected or sees negative scaling is 4K QD1.


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## EarthDog (Oct 25, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> and they have massive overheating problems at their rated speeds unless you cool them with a radiator, which adds to the cost. It's basically a trade between one and the other having both pros and cons. RAID0 splits data in half, which means 50% less TBW for each drive in the array actually.


I surely wouldn't call it massive... I don't have heatsinks on my two M.2 drives and they don't overheat.... just depends on the location and other factors...

Also, writes haven't been a worry on SSDs in generations. 

Last, most files are less than 4K. 4k R/W is where SSD's money is made bud. Clearly indicative to typical OS work and loads.

It also appears you are using two different versions of CDM? Why does one say 4K and the other says 4K QD4. QD1 v QD4 will make a difference.


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## cucker tarlson (Oct 25, 2017)

EarthDog said:


> I surely wouldn't call it massive... I don't have heatsinks on my two M.2 drives and they don't overheat.... just depends on the location and other factors...
> 
> Also, writes haven't been a worry on SSDs in generations.
> 
> ...


seems you're partly right on 4K files. 50-60% is 4K or less. Dunno about QD but I suppose higher queue depths (QD32/64) are more indicative than QD1. I read 4K files are clustered most of the time.


Spoiler: file prevalence











This is the same version of CDM (3.0) but I don't know how to set up QD4 (TT article said they set this QD size up themselves). Not that it matters in any way, QD1 and QD32 still tell pretty much most of the story. The higher the QD, the better RAID0 performs on smaller files.



Now this is really interesting. Found an article comparing 3x256GB 850pro's vs a single PCI-E 3.0 4x drive. This is really staggering. Time for a third one for me ? 







Even 950 pro gets hammered at 4K/4K QD4 write


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