RAID 0 for SSD Late 2011

[SayMilesAway]

Hello, I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro with a Crucial M4 SSD and the original 750GB HD in the superdrive slot using the optibay. I was wondering if I could purchase another SSD and put it where I have the old 750 Apple HD and do a RAID 0 setup? Would this work effectively? Is the superdrive a 6GB SATA? Any input would be great! Thanks.

 

[bax2003]

Do not RAID SSD and HDD....much better option is to make Fusion drive.

For Stripe RAID (RAID-0) to work optimal you need two+ drives which are at least similar speeds. Data is splitted between drives for speed in RAiD-0, but if part of data is MUCH slower, what is the point ?

With fusion drive, you get capacity of both drives but speed od SSD when it matters.

 

[SayMilesAway]

Do not RAID SSD and HDD....much better option is to make Fusion drive.

For Stripe RAID (RAID-0) to work optimal you need two+ drives which are at least similar speeds. Data is splitted between drives for speed in RAiD-0, but if part of data is MUCH slower, what is the point ?

With fusion drive, you get capacity of both drives but speed od SSD when it matters.

The post states I will be purchasing another SSD thus having 2.

 

[bax2003]

I am just saying that you do not RAID-up Crucial M4 SSD and classic mechanic 750GB hard disk drive, as you call it: old 750 Apple HD.

 

[maflynn]

I was wondering if I could purchase another SSD and put it where I have the old 750 Apple HD and do a RAID 0 setup? Would this work effectively? Is the superdrive a 6GB SATA? Any input would be great! Thanks.

Yup, some people do it. I think there's a risk, since if you one volume incurs any sort of corruption or issue, you lose the entire RAID. Make sure you have a solid backup.

Since RAID 0 offsets the latency in the mechanical drive, I wonder if you'll be benefitting all that much with a RAID 0 set up. I mean SSDs are fast, and if you're not really doing anything that pushes the drives, I don't think you'll notice a huge improvement on your day to day usage.

 

[Cloudsurfer]

Hello, I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro with a Crucial M4 SSD and the original 750GB HD in the superdrive slot using the optibay. I was wondering if I could purchase another SSD and put it where I have the old 750 Apple HD and do a RAID 0 setup? Would this work effectively? Is the superdrive a 6GB SATA? Any input would be great! Thanks.

I actually configured my girlfriends 2010 Mac mini this way. Took out the superdrive and fitted two crucial m500's in there. The 2010 only has sata 2 so she gets around 500 mb/sec but with sata 3 you should get near 1 gb/sec.

Note though that you will only benefit if you actually use those speeds. My girlfriend often duplicates large files so the raid-0 setup does pay off in her case.

 

[SayMilesAway]

I am just saying that you do not RAID-up Crucial M4 SSD and classic mechanic 750GB hard disk drive, as you call it: old 750 Apple HD.

Yes, I understand what you are saying. I said I was going RAID two SSD's. Not 1 SSD and 1 magnetic drive. You misunderstood.

Yup, some people do it. I think there's a risk, since if you one volume incurs any sort of corruption or issue, you lose the entire RAID. Make sure you have a solid backup.

Since RAID 0 offsets the latency in the mechanical drive, I wonder if you'll be benefitting all that much with a RAID 0 set up. I mean SSDs are fast, and if you're not really doing anything that pushes the drives, I don't think you'll notice a huge improvement on your day to day usage.

Thanks. Even a Ferrari starts to feel slow after a while lol

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Unless you really need the added speed, I don't really see an advantage in doing that, apart from the mirror backup of your files of course.

 

[glenthompson]

Some 2011 MBPs have problems with a SSD in the opti-bay.