Is RAID 0 functional with one normal SSD and one SSD in place of disk drive?
RAID0 performance and storage characteristics is limited by the slowest member in the array. Never RAID0 a SSD and HDD…. you get the random/sequential performance of the HDD while getting the storage capacity of double the SSD. That’s the worst of both worlds.RAID0 of SSDs provides virtually zero benefit to consumer usage patterns. How often do you read/write 10GB+ files to another storage system that can match performance? How often do you load 1GB into memory? Another factor is 2 SSDs in RAID0 also nearly doubling the risk of total data loss. There’s little upside but a definite downside.
Should I go with a SSD or 2 ATA drives in Raid-0?
Do not use RAID 0, it is a disaster waiting to happen. No software RAID is worth considering these days, not if you a) value your data and b) don't want to spend your life waiting for your HDDs.Buy an SSD then back it up, every day preferably to a local and remote destination.If you are determined to use RAID then get a RAID card (hardware RAID) and use RAID 10, 50 or 60. The downside 10 uses four disks minimum, 50 uses six disks minimum and 60 uses eight disks minimum.Sound like overkill? Then you don't need RAID, just backup your data as mentioned.
Can we use an M.2 SSD and a SATA SSD at the same time?
Yes. Make sure OS is only on SSD. My HP laptop didn't have SSD initially. It's was very slow. I added 256GB M.2 Samsung SSD and cloned existing Win10 on it. Now it's much faster. Old 1TB SATA HDD is still inside my laptop and now used for storing photos etc. Remember to format the old HDD after successfully cloning WIN10 on the SSD.
Is it a good idea to have an SSD and a normal HDD in your desktop, not an all-in-one?
Upgrading to an SSD and relegating your HDD to media storage is so simple and inexpensive that it makes very little sense in 2018 not to do it.Media files require no appreciable speed anywhere near the 150MB/s upper limit of mechanical drives, so the only real drawbacks of keeping the old drive are if it is noisy to the point that it annoys you, or if it is so old that it is beginning to develop bad sector errors.The following bar graph shows the advantage of SSD load time performance in typical desktop applications.The desktops I have that use PCIe 3.0x4 NVMe drives will load these Office apps in about 0.25 seconds. But SATA SSD speed in Q4 2018 is an excellent balance of price, performance, and capacity.With brands like Patriot, HP, Kingston, Team Group, Silico Power, and Gigabyte all offering 240GB SSDs for $39 it is becoming a real buyers’ market for system drive updates!
Can anyone help me? My SSD is showing up in my boot sequence but does not have a SATA connection.
I have a small Windows 10 PC that has an internal 240 GB SSD as drive D:. This drive is connected through a USB to SATA converter. It shows up as connecting through a USB connection, and I can eject the drive just like other USB drives.External SATA drives are normally provided with a USB interface from the external enclosure to the computer. Some PCs have a similar USB to SATA adapter built onto the motherboard.
How does RAID 0 increase performance?
When you do RAID0 striping you essentially combine the two disks. The trivial way and non-performance enhancing is to arrange one disk after the other. The other arrangement is to interleave areas of one disk with the other so that you take the first 64KB of the first disk and immediately after that the first 64KB of the second disk, next is the second 64KB of the first disk and then the second 64KB of the second disk and so on.The 64KB is a configurable knob, change it according to the performance and IO characteristics of the work load.What happens now is that if you have two IOs pending on the RAID device and they go to different 64KB areas you are likely to have them go to different disks and so get double the performance. This scales pretty well since each disk can do approximately 100 IO operations per second but the combined device can do 200 IO operations per second. This assumes a uniform distribution of areas, if all the requests happen to go to a single disk out of the two you'll only get 100 IOPS.
Intel Rapid Storage Technology SSD Help?
My Intel Rapid Storage Technology is giving me an error. "Your system has detected one or more errors, and data may be lost. Your system is configured to enable advanced SATA features for optimal power management and increased storage performance. Refer to the details below for more information." "The Windows write-cache buffer flushing policy can be enabled for all RAID array drives to ensure data integrity or disabled to improve data performance. Click the help etc..." "Cache Flushing By default, Windows* write-cache buffer flushing is enabled to ensure data integrity. This means that the system will periodically instruct the storage driver to write all cached data to the main storage media. These periodic commands result in decreased overall system performance. You can choose to disable Windows write-cache buffer flushing to restore system performance, allowing the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology driver to handle all write-cache buffer flushing. You can disable Windows write-cache buffer flushing to improve performance by completing the following steps: 1. Click Start and then right-click Computer and select Manage. 2. In Computer Management, click Device Manager, and then expand Disk drives. 3. Right-click your disk device and select Properties. 4. Click the Policies tab. 5. Select the 'Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device' check box. 6. Click 'OK'." Not really sure what the error is here. For my Intel Raid 0 Volume and on my two M4-CT128 M4SSD2 I have Write-caching enabled. One says M4-CT128 M4SSD2, while the other says M4-CT128 M4SSD2 SCSI Disk Device. On the one that says M4-CT128 M4SSD2 SCSI Disk Device I have a Removal Policy and a Write-caching policy. The Removal policy is set to Better performance (default) and both have Write-caching enabled, while M4-CT128 M4SSD2 doesn't have a Removal Policy. Both have the Driver Version 6.2.9200.16384 dated 6/21/2006. Under the Volumes tab for all (Intel Raid 0 Volume and both M4 devices) no information is shown. Under details, Hardware Ids for M4-CT128 M4SSD2 SCSI Disk Device it reads SCSI\DiskM4-CT128M4SSD2__________000F, while for the M4-CT128 M4SSD2 it reads SCSI\DiskATA_____M4-CT128M4SSD2__000F. They're the exact same type of SSD. I'm guessing I need to change something in my BIOS for these devices? If so, what would that be?
Is upgrading from a Sata SSD to a m.2 SSD worth it?
It depended on what model of M.2 SSD you are going for.SATA3 interface has transfer rate of 6Gbps and topline SATA SSDs saturate that bandwidth with 540MB/s read performance.Entry level M2.SSD models are same as SATA III SSDs but just interface change eg Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SATAIII Thus they don't offer any performance gain.You need to go for M.2 SSD that offers 32Gbps speed and mentions PCIe3.0 x4 in specs. Similarly your motherboard should have PCIe lanes directly from CPU to M.2 socket ( and not chipset PCIe lanes) to achieve max performance of 32 Gbps ( other wise chipset lanes at present peak to max 16 Gbps) . These Gen 3 (direct PCIe3.9 x4 lane) M2 sockets are termed as Ultra M.2 or Hyper M.2 etc by motherboard manufacturers.Thus upgrading from SATA to M.2 SSD will be worth for Graphics, Video Rendering , 360 degree 4K video editing, 4K/VR Gaming if coupled with equally capable core i7 CPU in hyperthreading mode for home/ office apps it is not needed.
In 2018, is an SSD drive and a mechanical keyboard necessary on any new computer build?
Short Answer : No and Nope.Long Answer : While there's a very noticeable difference in boot time and overall performance if you have a SSD as your boot drive, it not “necessarily”. Have a 7200rpm hard drive might not be bad for light workloads. Specially with the introduction of “Optane module” by Intel, the boot timing and overall performance is almost as fast as an average/cheap ssd, and the overall cost still remains relatively less. [for the uninitiated, optane module is a small caching drive than fits on your motherboard, and intelligently converts your HDD into a hybrid drive essentially]That being said, a great to of the line ssd like the Samsung 970 will still crush the speeds of any non-ssd setup by a lot.So is it necessary? Nope, but is it way better to have? Yes.Coming to the mechanical keyboard question, this is actually much easier, not it is not necessary, in fact on the contrary, people who don't like noisy keys and aren't really professional gamers, should not buy mechanical keyboards. They are pretty noisy, and the difference of input lag between mechanical and non-mechanical keyboards (membrane/chiklet/butterfly) is soo tiny that most people will never notice it, even regular gamers won't notice it.