SSDs , raid etc. some questions.

[jabberwocky]

having used raid on most of my biulds since 2003 , using conventional hard drives ,but with SSDs sporting much faster read/write speeds ,I am tempted .
but I have a few questions first .
1 . are they reliable when raided ,and do they behave when partitioned ,with multiple OSs installed etc.
2 . would a couple of sataIII 6gb/sec be more reliable in the long term .
finally ,I assume a few members here are allready enjoying the SSD/raid experience ,and would welcome some reccomendations , bearing in mind ,I want more performance ,but longevity is more important ultimately .
I am  currently using (thanks to Absic) a newly installed GA-880GMA-USB3 with a FX6100 cpu and 16gb of DDR3 1600-RAM , my board does support sata III (6gb) and is configured to overcome the 3tb  drive limit.
thanks . Graham

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

The thing is a lot of what you are asking can't be answered with any degree of accuracy yet because the drives have not been in long term use so as to how long they will last and long term reliability can't be gauged. They are certainly faster and offer the benefit of no noise or heat which can be a bonus.

I can't comment on the reliability when partitioned with multiple OSes as I haven't tried that.

The thing is magnetic drives can't hold a candle to SSDs as far as performance is concerned but they do offer the size for backup of data.  SSDs are the fastest things going though and if you make several into a RAID tremendous speeds are possible.

[jabberwocky]

thank you ,yes a bit of a daft question ,taking into account how new the technology is , I have dabbled in ramdrives ,I was running OSs from small ramdrives back as far as 2003 ,blistering . not so long ago I was using dual hyperdrive 5s packed with 48gb of DDR2 ram ,and the speeds were stunning with write speeds easily beating anything the SSDs could deliver ,but technology moves on ,and I now see SSDs finally delivering much faster write speeds . I guess I may get some sata 3 conventional HDDs  for the time being and sit back ,and wait ,Prices for SSDs are dropping as performace figures climb .
thanks again .

[absic]

I have a couple of 60GB SSD's in a RAID0 Array on my GA-990FXA-UD5 and it seems to be very stable but how it would fair over a long period of time I'm not to sure. It is very fast and for the cost of the drives it is worth every penny.

With the current problems in Thailand the cost of HDD's has shot up as production has slumped. Although this is only a temporary issue it has meant the the cost of SSD's is becoming more acceptable, especially if you are planning to use them as BOOT drives where you don't really need a massive amount of space. Yes, you have to change the way you work a little, as you need to save things onto a different drive rather than the usual C: drive which most things are saved to by default, and maybe take more care when installing programmes but the advantages are very impressive.

[jabberwocky]

I agree Absic, I adopted HyperOS back in the early days 2002-3 and learned all about how to best divide and use the space available, I remember running windows ME from a 378mb ramdrive (hyperdrive) and getting blistering speeds ,while being immune from viruses ,I was even getting between 9 and 11 kb download speed ,when the best others were getting was nearer to 4kb by altering net protocols.
I still sometimes setup a ram disk as a scratch disk when photo editing etc ,it does offer a nice boost .