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After 5 years of trusty service (well, not totally trusty ) my Raid 0 setup finally gave up on me.

I've bought both drives back in 2005, and have been using them in two different machines since then, almost every day.

The first of the pair died in 2007 and was replaced by WD with a new one.

As luck may have it, the replacement just died yesterday evening. Unfortunately, that's two months after the guarantee expired (dang).

Now I'm troubled, what should I do?

Buy TWO VELOCIRAPTOR150 drives (total euro 290) and run them again in Raid 0 configuration, or buy ONE INTEL XM25 80 GB SSD (total euro 219)?

(I find the 160 GB a bit too expensive for my taste, and I just might buy a second SSD in a couple of months.)

So, what should I do?

This machine is used 50% for coding, 20% for gaming, 20% for work. I do little to no video, sound and graphic work on it at the moment. My primary language of choice is (you guessed it ) PureBasic, which until yesterday resided on my Raid0 set on the C: drive. My swap and temp file were also located on the same Raid0 setup on the D: drive (done some benches, and impact of them being a little bit further down on the same HD didn't affect me much in real life).

I *am* running a multiboot configuration using OSL2000, and use VirtualBox to run other OS'es. Honestly, I haven't done much multibooting lately but may do so when I finally make the move to Windows 7.

80 GB on a SSD may seem small but as I've lived with approx. 80 GB dedicated to C: on my 150 GB Raid0 I think I can survive that sqeeze.

Suggestions welcome!

IF your using Windows 7, and can aford it, i'd go with the SSD. If your using Vista i'd go with the SATA's set up again in Raid 0, especially if your gaming, if your not concerned with mirroring.

SFSxOI wrote: IF your using Windows 7, and can aford it, i'd go with the SSD. If your using Vista i'd go with the SATA's set up again in Raid 0, especially if your gaming, if your not concerned with mirroring.

Stil using XP

I would go with one if you are still using XP... If BOTH died then you cannot rebuild can you?

Go with one and remember: BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!!!

It is a fool that does not hit SAVE early and often!
(and yes that has bit me in the butt as well!)

I have an ocz 64GB ssd and would rather have the raptors. IMO the possibly marginal difference in performance is more than offset by the price and "problems" associated with ssd (constant firmware updates, tons of problems - check the forums).

Just my opinion, but I wish I had it to do over.

cheers

:
Buying a new set of system harddisk(s) should include backup harddisks with good backup software
if you do not already have that. Don't just rely on a raid mirror harddisk.
In my case two times a harddisk died short after another. The loss of data was so expensive
and frustrating that I got myself decent backup software : MirrorFolder.
39 dollar is not much for what you get : backing up in realtime also in raid and systemdrive
all in the background with no drop in resources. See what mirrorfolder can do here :
http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/
cw

i use it, nice software saving my pb folders on three hdd so i'll never lose again my hard work

No worries about my backups, it's the choice between a Raptor pair vs. SSD single drive that I'm about now

Yes, those raptors all fail after 2 to 3 years.
have a dozen RIP of them here

Be sure to check the manufacturers forums (if available) and reviews of the product you're considering. ssd's have a limited life span based on number of writes (like flash memory) and need some TLC in order to perform at their stated capabilities. Win 7 includes some "features" that make it easier to maintain them that windows xp does not, so you'll likely have to perform some regular maintenence to achieve anywhere near optimal performance. Not to mention the occasional hangs of up to 10 seconds or so.

Just do due dilence in researching before you dive in and spend a bundle on an ssd

cheers

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Berikco wrote:Yes, those raptors all fail after 2 to 3 years.
have a dozen RIP of them here

Well, you should do something about them then, there's a guarantee of five years on them... or at least on the ones I bought thus far.

rsts wrote:Not to mention the occasional hangs of up to 10 seconds or so. Just do due dilence in researching before you dive in and spend a bundle on an ssd

Yeah, saw one or two of those... Dunno' why...

Oh. Yeah. Why I could see them ...

Forgot to mention: yesterday I bought two new drives, 1x Intel X25M G2 and 1x WD Black 1 TB... The SSD is now drive 0, the WD black is drive 1, and drive 2 and 3 are each a 500 GB Seagate (who are destined for future use in a home server, but that's not here yet... yet )

Running XP, not Win7. Loading is fast, but I haven't tested enough. I just transplanted my years old Windows XP installation so my tests are probably not very representative...

I picked the X25M as it appears to be the least affected by XP's 63 kb alignment issues. I now have to figure out how to enable trim, all options in Intel's tool are greyed out, I suspect I have to replace the drive 0 NVidia driver with a generic IDE driver...

Anyway, first I'm going to reshuffle all files on this machine, after making a backup, obviously

rsts wrote:Be sure to check the manufacturers forums (if available) and reviews of the product you're considering. ssd's have a limited life span based on number of writes (like flash memory) and need some TLC in order to perform at their stated capabilities. Win 7 includes some "features" that make it easier to maintain them that windows xp does not, so you'll likely have to perform some regular maintenence to achieve anywhere near optimal performance. Not to mention the occasional hangs of up to 10 seconds or so.

Just do due dilence in researching before you dive in and spend a bundle on an ssd

Hm, i dont have any problems with my SSD, it's a 64GB Super Talent with Samsung controller. It's fast as hell and i don't had a single problem with it. I never did a firmware update and it never hangs. The life span of SSD's is very high. It is limited but the manufacturer of my SSD sais it's life span is 180 years if i write 5GB every day to it.