RAID 5 with SSDs; how many and what class of SSDs to use?
I have a 850 EVO 250gb as win/programs/games disk and I am thinking buying more SSDs to go with RAID 5 in order to gain more speed. I know the pros and cons of RAID 5.
The question is: 5 cheap 120gb SSDs (surely dram-less, maybe tlc), or 3 EVO-class SSDs? What combination is going to be faster/better?
Side note and question: My matx mobo is old, has no nvme, no extra pcie slots from GPUs (hence no nvme adapter), so good old SATA, and of cource all this in software RAID. The side question, in case of URE during a rebuild, how to know if I just lose just a sector or two OR if I lose all the data?
53 Answers
The 850EVOs will be better. I wouldn't RAID5 them due to the calculation costs - especially in software. I would use RAID0 and spend some money on a HDD to back them up.
62xSSD, RAID 0, HDD backup, will easily outperform the rest of your hardware - the weakest link for your gaming will be elsewhere - bus, PSU, GPU or CPU. Just be careful that the next weakest link is not too close to the one you are solving with the SSD's - drive access times. Otherwise you will not get the UI improvement you expect: that is your 2xSSD might not give you any better gaming experience than your 1xSSD.
1Don't use RAID 5 on a workstation. Maybe on NAS... and not even then. On NAS use RAIDZ or Btrfs. On a workstation, use fast SSDs with a good backup strategy. I use two main volumes in mine, and I just assume I'm going to lose either or both any minute. I run a single NVMe for my system drive (pic 1) with dual SSDs as a Windows striped RAID 0 volume for my "data" drive (pic 2). Performance is excellent and the (possible) gain using hardware RAID is negligible. I use Veeam and Duplicati to NAS and cloud to ensure a 3-2-1 backup.
