Fastest SSD RAID for the $

[Ryan P]

I've been looking at options from an enthusiast perspective to setup a very fast SSD RAID without having to raid Fort Knox. :)

One thought I had is this option:

8 x OWC 40GB SSDs $99 each
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/SSDMX040/

MaxConnect 8x Optical Bay kit for Mac Pro with PCI Express Card $549
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=190&CFID=759922&CFTOKEN=54078811

They list 2GB/sec read and 1.6GB/sec write, I'm assuming RAID 0 setup

So all total is $1341 for 320GB of some insanely fast storage

My thought is it would be wise to buy a couple extra of the drives as spares and set up a time machine backup so it is relatively easy to restore if a drive fails. I'm really not sure how to estimate the reliability of a SSD......

Is there anything better?

[alphaod]

You could get a PCIe SSD.

[Ryan P]

You could get a PCIe SSD.

Honestly I don't know much about the options out there. I've read about the Revodrive but that didn't seem OS X compatible? Just looking at this http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/ProductDetail.jsp?LISTID=80000C5A-1257771092 which has nice specs but is $3200!

Probably the smartest move is to wait and let SSD specs and capacities come to us as they have been making very impressive gains over the past few years, but I'm curious to see what is possible today.

[mwayne85]

All SSDs are ridiculously expensive. But the cheapest I've seen is the Crucial C300 256GB from Newegg. I can't say from experience but I hear good things about the speed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148349

[deconstruct60]

I've been looking at options from an enthusiast perspective to setup a very fast SSD RAID without having to raid Fort Knox. :)


is this a contest to flush the least of amount money down the toilet but it still be significant ?

What app do you have that requires > 1GB/s throughput. Capturing some ranges of HD uncompressed video isn't even in that range. As an enthusiast you are doing it for giggles. There are folks with high bandwidth for pay jobs that aren't even that high. Some shops are that high but have multiple people beating on same SAN node.



Is there anything better?

If have 8 drives to pump data to at high bandwidths some fraction should be outside the Mac Pro case. You can compose some "pimp my ride" hack that puts it all inside the case, but once take into account backups and increased reliability you'll end up outside the case anyway.

Going outside the case can get you more power ( external power supplies) and possible chance to distribute load over multiple controllers. (so have bandwidth to do something other than synthetic benchmarks. )

[Ryan P]

As an enthusiast you are doing it for giggles.

Yep it's just for giggles. My Mac Pro is not used for income generation.

[nanofrog]

is this a contest to flush the least of amount money down the toilet but it still be significant ?
I'm wondering the same thing.... Is this just for bragging rights? :confused:

[Ryan P]

nevermind...

[Honumaui]

if ya got the money ? go for it more power to ya :)

I am serious about that :) I dont get into the thats stupid ? I might get into the their are better ways etc.. if its for a working machine but when it comes to fun toys anything goes !!!!!
and when some one says just cause they want to ? and if they can fund it cool !!! I say the nay sayers are just jealous !

[deconstruct60]

Yep it's just for giggles. My Mac Pro is not used for income generation.

The non giggly part is that with RAID-0 :

MTTF-raid = MTTF-d / n

where n is the number of disks in a stripe set. So stripping 8 ways means you you just cut your time to failure to an 1/8th of what it was for the drive in the first place. (which isn't super high if plan to write significant amount to disk too at same speeds. ) .

With a stripe of 2 you are probably getting a decent amount of MTTF back because cutting writes in half. However, at some point adding more units catches up to you.

If had a relatively fixed dictionary was doing crazy high low latency lookups as backend to a network service maybe. .... but the config isn't worth the drama in most other cases.

As a stunt probably would have to crack the case open to power the drives so might as well leave them dangling willy nilly on the table to crank the benchmark.

Just wait though. It will be a better stunt in about a year or so when can attach SATA III drives to a SATA III controller. Those will be crazy high numbers and this stunt will look tame. LOL.


P.S. the cheapest way is buy just 4 SSDs , 4 2.5 - 3.5 adapters and fire up software raid.

about $500 (if get external case for hard drive. ). Run a benchmark and then recofig to something useful. [ donate the diff between $1300 and $500 to flood/equake/etc victims ... ]

[VirtualRain]

If you really want ball's out SSD RAID performance, you need a PCIe card. My three X25-M's running in RAID0 are maxing out the ICH on sequential reads.

My Results here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=841556