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On my laptop, I have a 22GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. I just reinstalled Windows and because of some problems, I reset everything in Intel RST. In the end I ended up using a 44GB Raid 0 partition, but now I have read more about it, I feel like that doesn't make much sense. I think I won't get any speed benefit from using an SSD, as it will be capped at the speed of the HDD.

  1. Is there any benefit to using an SSD/HDD Raid 0 system?
  2. The biggest problem is, I guess, that my SSD drive is only 22GB. What do you think is the best set up for this system?
  3. If you are suggesting not using Raid 0 and just using the SSD separately, now that I have installed Windows, is there a way to remove the Raid 0, and just put all the files in the SSD drive and use the HDD only for programs (still though programs won't benefit from the speed of the SSD), without reinstalling Windows?
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2 Answers 2

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I ended up using Intel Smart Response, which promises a good performance improvement using caching. I haven't done any benchmark, and never used pure SSD systems, so I'm not sure how good it is, but it seems fast enough.

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RAID 0 is usually not recommended for non HDDs.

RAID 0 is fast, but if one of the drives dies, all the data is potentially lost. With SDDs, there is a much lower failure rate, so it's a bit more acceptable risk.

With this set-up, you might want to put those files that are pretty much read-only, but read a lot... such as the OS. If you game a lot, you might see a benifit installing the game there as well.

I've not heard of any way to un-RAID a set, but you might be able to do a system backup to an external drive, remove the RAID, and restore... but I've never done that myself.

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  • Can you give sources for your first statement? About the second, it isn't as if the SSD isn't the bottleneck (because they will fail faster than HDD's). The risk is always there.
    – Doktoro Reichard
    Commented Sep 21, 2013 at 17:17
  • I'm sure I could find sources via Bing/Google... but I've been 'doing' PCs since, well, before PCs.
    – Don Nickel
    Commented Sep 21, 2013 at 18:34
  • Well, RAID arrays are quite recent things... and SSD are even more recent. Technical expertise aside, I think it would help the community if you could check your statements.
    – Doktoro Reichard
    Commented Sep 21, 2013 at 18:38
  • Sorry, I hit enter before I had finished my comment. As of a couple years ago, SSDs were considered MORE reliable than HDDs - not less as Dortoro claims. Technology is always changing, and that might not be the case, but I haven't heard that. Here is an article about this from Tom's Hardware: tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html
    – Don Nickel
    Commented Sep 21, 2013 at 18:51
  • Actually the article isn't saying that. To sum it up, both HDD and SSD display similar times, the study being aggravated by the fact that, at the time, SSD were only used for 2 years. The projections they make in the neat graph at the end fail from the same problem, they extrapolate as linear when the HDD reference is exponential. Not to mention the entrepreneurial aspect of the study. And I haven't read anything about RAID 0.
    – Doktoro Reichard
    Commented Sep 21, 2013 at 20:09

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