Would I see much of a performance difference between SATA II vs. SATA III SSD?

[teknology9]

Hi Soar,

I remember the first fish I caught, it was a brown trout caught on free lined breadflake.......but I won't say how long ago that was!!!!!


You could try this software to test yout SSD's...here:  http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark

I'm sure others on the forum will recommend other software but it might be worth looking at.

UPDATE

absic just beat me to it!!!!
Cheers,

Teknology9

[Dark Mantis]

You were asking about RAID Soar. Well there are different types of RAID. The RAID0 is two drives run together in a striped formation which basically means that half the data is written to one while the other half is written to the other. This way you get almost twice tjhe normal speed so you can see the attraction! RAID1 on the other hand is for safety and is known as mirroring. The same data is written to both drives which means the same speed but a backup of everything that you have. There are other RAIDs as well but they are just varieties of these really.

[soarwitheagles]

You were asking about RAID Soar. Well there are different types of RAID. The RAID0 is two drives run together in a striped formation which basically means that half the data is written to one while the other half is written to the other. This way you get almost twice tjhe normal speed so you can see the attraction! RAID1 on the other hand is for safety and is known as mirroring. The same data is written to both drives which means the same speed but a backup of everything that you have. There are other RAIDs as well but they are just varieties of these really.

DM,

Thank you for confirming to me that RAID0 does indeed increase the performance speed of the SSD.  Ok, I have two identical Agility 2 SATA II's that are 60GB each.  I am only using one of these Agility SSD's at the moment, the other has been sitting in a box doing absolutely nothing for nearly one year.

Is there a way to install this extra SSD and turn my system into a RAID0 now, or must I reformat, reinstall the OS, and begin all over again?  Also, will TRIM still work when I switch to RAID0?

Finally, I was wondering if it would it be a better idea to simply sell off the SATA II SSD's and invest in a nice Crucial M4 128GB?  If the performance difference is really that big between a SATA II and SATA III, then I don't mind selling the SATA II SSD's and investing in a nice M4.

Please share your thoughts on this with me, DM.

Soar

[soarwitheagles]

Hi Soar,

for testing SSD's I would recommend ATTO which you can download from here: http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark as it's easy to use and better still free!!

There will undoubtedly be recommendations made by other members for different software solutions for benchmarking but, having spent over 8 weeks benching my own SSD's with various software and talking to manufacturer's this is definitely the best out there at the moment.

A note of caution though, you don't want to run benchmarking software too often on SSD's as, because of the nature of writing to the drive for testing, it will very quickly have an impact on their performance, especially over the long term.

Absic,

Ok, I will download and bench mark both systems to see exactly how big the difference is....

THanks again!

Soar

EDIT: Ok, I downloaded and tested each system and the results are interesting....

The SATA II and SATA III Read and writes vary considerably, and not sure which one is best to use in my circumstances....

SATA II: 276 Read, 248 Write

SATA III 379 Read, 80 Write

Now how do I interpret this?  The SATA III is 3 times slower than the SATA II?  This appears quite contradictory.  Why is the SATA III slower than the SATA II?

Maybe the RAID0 on the Agility 2's would do much better....

Then again, I haven't tested the M4 yet, or this REVO drive you speak of...

Soar

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Soar,

My advice to you would be to wait before spending any money on different SSDs at the moment as Intel has been working on making TRIM available when using RAID0 which it isn't at present. It won't be long now until they release their work. OCZ have actually found a way of doing it on their drives but only the very latest ones. For now there is of course Garbage Collection.

As for installing another drive to make a RAID0 array then yes you will need to start from scratch I'm afraid. Mind you by the sound of things it is time for a reformat anyway. I always do that at least once a year just tpo get everything back up to speed again and clear the crap.

Anyway I would say install your spare drive if you want to as a RAID member and do a clean install but wait for now for upgrading.

[soarwitheagles]

Hi Soar,

My advice to you would be to wait before spending any money on different SSDs at the moment as Intel has been working on making TRIM available when using RAID0 which it isn't at present. It won't be long now until they release their work. OCZ have actually found a way of doing it on their drives but only the very latest ones. For now there is of course Garbage Collection.

As for installing another drive to make a RAID0 array then yes you will need to start from scratch I'm afraid. Mind you by the sound of things it is time for a reformat anyway. I always do that at least once a year just tpo get everything back up to speed again and clear the crap.

Anyway I would say install your spare drive if you want to as a RAID member and do a clean install but wait for now for upgrading.

Thanks again DM for the excellent advice...you never fail to give a good, sound, and wise advice and I would like to say I appreciate you and the time you take for us here.

Yes, I agree, a reformat on my AMD rig is long over due...and besides that, there is less than 10GB's free out of the 60GB's and it gets smaller every day!

I like your advice about RAID0 with two of the Agility SSD's because they are identical and one is merely sitting around and doing absolutely nothing!

I will probably switch to the Intel rig as my main rig now...it has 20 GB free out of the 55 Gb on the C300 SATA III.  Not sure why the write speed on that one is only 80 MB's per second, but it sure acts and feels faster than the Agility SATA II.  Perhaps the write speeds are not as important as the read speeds and the IOP's?

Sustained Sequential Read
    355MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)
    265MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)

Sustained Sequential Write
    75MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s)
    75MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)

Random 4k READ: 60,000 IOPS

Random 4k WRITE: 15,000 IOPS

Anyway, the Crucial C300 seems perkier and faster and more responsive than the Agility...

Now I look forward to Intel launching this new trim for RAID0.

Thanks again,

Soar