Hybrid hard drive RAID setup

[Themegamacman]

Hey all! So I was thinking about picking up two Momentus XT's (http://trdd.us/qF) and throwing them into a striped RAID setup, so ideally I would have about twice the read/write speed of a 7200 RPM drive, but I have a few questions. Will the fact that it's two 7200 RPM drives, one in the HD bay, and one in the optical bay, have a big impact on my battery? Also, would it get loud? My other option is either a Samsung 830 SSD (http://trdd.us/qG) RAID setup, or a Crucial OCZ Vertex 3 (http://trdd.us/qH) RAID setup. These would be super fast and damn quiet, but the price is steep. Thanks for all the responses guys, I love these forums. Thanks.

Edit: Ok now I don't wanna do the Momentus raid, just the SSD raid. Has anybody had experience with that?

 

[Themegamacman]

Has anybody has experience with this type of setup before?

 

[joaoferro37]

Good luck with Momentus RAID.

 

[HellDiverUK]

Avoid OCZ SSDs. I bought an Agility3, and it's junk. After 6 months I've had three replacements, the 4th one is in my HTPC because I don't trust it for a second, and it doesn't matter if/when it blows up.

Much happier with my Crucial M4.

 

[Panch0]

I tried a dual SSD RAID 0 configuration for a while. For me it was not noticeably faster than a single SSD and I didn't need the extra capacity so I just put the optical drive back in and used the second SSD in a different system.

If I needed more storage space, I would just use a single small SSD for the system drive and a HDD for Data. You could use a moments as the data drive if you want.

I would not try to RAID a pair of hybrid drives - that just sounds like asking for trouble, but I've never researched it so maybe it works. Best of luck!

 

[rutledjw]

If I needed more storage space, I would just use a single small SSD for the system drive and a HDD for Data. You could use a moments as the data drive if you want.

I would not try to RAID a pair of hybrid drives - that just sounds like asking for trouble, but I've never researched it so maybe it works. Best of luck!

Agreed, on both points, but I 'm personally not fond of JBOD period. I don't know of any commercial storage guys (EMC, NetApp, etc) who would suppport hybrid drives in their configs. I think it'll definitely hit your battery, why else would the MBA get such better batter life? That being said, I get more battery life by dimming my disoplay than aggressive HDD settings when under battery.

A lot of it also depends on what you're doing. If you can afford it, the SSD is probably the way to go (I've had good exp with Crucial). But what are you doing that you'll need the speed improvement? Just going to SSD on my servers (Linux) I saw a huge improvement, but my MBA not as much. But I'm also not doing much I/O

 

[Themegamacman]

Avoid OCZ SSDs. I bought an Agility3, and it's junk. After 6 months I've had three replacements, the 4th one is in my HTPC because I don't trust it for a second, and it doesn't matter if/when it blows up.

Much happier with my Crucial M4.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure to avoid that drive because I've heard of other problems as well. It looks like it's between the M4 or the 830

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I tried a dual SSD RAID 0 configuration for a while. For me it was not noticeably faster than a single SSD and I didn't need the extra capacity so I just put the optical drive back in and used the second SSD in a different system.

If I needed more storage space, I would just use a single small SSD for the system drive and a HDD for Data. You could use a moments as the data drive if you want.

I would not try to RAID a pair of hybrid drives - that just sounds like asking for trouble, but I've never researched it so maybe it works. Best of luck!

Thanks so much for the info. I guess I'll just start with one and if I really feel like I'll benefit from a second, I'll throw in another. Thanks so much. I don't really need it for much intensive work anyways, I was just looking forward a little bit.

 

[Medic278]

I would go with the Intel 520 series. They are fantastic drives and I haven't really heard of people on here having problems with them. Some people have had issues with the Cruical when updating the firmware. I have heard good things about Samsung and only went with Intel because of the extensive testing they do and the 5 year warranty it just seemed like a better product.