RAID, SSDs and Mechanical drives (all on SATA II)

[cb600fshornet]

Oh the joys of choice!

Right, got a few options here. When referring to RAID, I mean Type 0 (Striping)

A. Buy an OCZ Agility 3 120GB for about 90GBP
B Buy 2 OCZ Agility 3 60GB to RAID together for about 110GBP
C. Buy another 1TB drive to RAID with my current. ~70GBP
D. Buy 2 250GB mechanical drives (10,000rpm at least) to RAID together ~N/A


Right, first thing, how much would two fast but cheap mechnical drivs be in terms of option D?

Also, I only have a SATA II board (3GBps). This is why I was considering RAID to bring it up to speed, plus in the future it'll be like a rocket :3


Would RAIDing my current 1TB be worth doing? As the access times would still be high, so boot times may not be hugely affected.

Also, do the Agility 3 drives have support for TRIM in RAID-0 mode? Or will only the single? (Or equivalent)

What sort of life could I expect from an SSD? (Average usage, games etc, About 30-40 hours a week usage perhaps.


Just answer what you can!

Cheers!

Joe

 

[OhSnapWord]

For what it's worth, I have a pair of 1TB 7200 RPM drives in a RAID 0. According to HDTune, my average read speed is ~225MB/s which is in the ball park of a SATA II SSD. Windows boots in about 30 seconds for me. Sequential R/W is very fast however the random seeks are killer but not as bad as a single drive.

 

[cb600fshornet]

Yeah, the random reads for my usage are priority.

Would using a stripe size of 32kb or 64kb be beneficial over say, using 128kb for this setup? Would it be better at random R/W? :3

 

[OhSnapWord]

64k would be ideal for smaller R/W like gaming.