Dual SSD RAID

[TheOllyBanks]

Its almost common knowledge that if two identical SSD's are placed in a hardware RAID you can achieve a speed boost and larger capacities. I would like to do this on my brand new hackintosh build. Lion is currently sitting on a WD 1TB Black, but I have two Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD's. Is it possible to put these two SSD's in a hardware RAID and have Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 boot off them?

 

[Going Bald]

You should basically follow the same procedure as creating a RAID array with platter hard drives.

Use disk utility to create a raid array with the SSDs. Clone the WD to the raid array. Manually install Chimera to each or the raid SSDs.

See http://aquamac.proboards.com/index.cgi? ... 613&page=1 for a step-by-step

 

[TheOllyBanks]

Thanks for the advice!

 

[vienna01]

I don't intend to highjack the thread, but I see an opportunity for OSX86 folks to get great info as you are building your hard drive/ssd configurations.

If it is correct that we see much better performance for HDD Raid 0 because of the relatively long time to read/write to HDDs. When we use 2 SSDs [Raid 0] should we see less relative improvement [%] than 2 HDDs?

If you do can a little test it would be very interesting.
Using Black Magic Disk Speed Test, set up 2 HHDs in Raid 0.
Measure % improvement over 1 HDD.
Then measure for SSD. Add the second SSD for a Raid 0 config as you discussed. Measure the % improvement of going to SSD Raid 0.

I guess that the % improvement for single HDD vs. Raid HDD will be much greater than
for 1 SSD vs Raid 0 with 2 SSDs.

I don't even have a single SSD yet. Otherwise I would do the experiment myself.
With the rapidly falling prices of SSDs, buying 2 of them for a RAID 0 configuration might be something even I might do if the measurements of % improvement are strong.

I looked around for this kind of test on the inet. Only found many HDD Raid 0 vs. single SSD. If someone finds a HDD Raid 0 vs SSD Raid 0 comparison please share the reference with us.

 

[Going Bald]

I looked around for this kind of test on the inet. Only found many HDD Raid 0 vs. single SSD. If someone finds a HDD Raid 0 vs SSD Raid 0 comparison please share the reference with us.

Toms Hardware did one back in 2008 with a 4 SSD raid - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd ... 26-10.html

Been waiting for an updated article from anyone on the SATA III drives in RAID array

 

[vienna01]

Good find!
Yes, we really need similar studies about today's HDDs and SSDs. I still believe, the big increase in throughput will be from using a single SSD. Adding a second SSD in a RAID 0 configuration might only give us a much smaller increase over the first SSD.

If we also consider that manufacturing HDDs involves mechanical parts vs SSDs, soon, the SSD will be the cheaper solution vs. the use of HDDs. Also because HDDs have moving parts in operation, the reliability and life of SSDs will also favor SSDs. If we stretch the application of Moore's Law, that might happen in 4 years. Disregarding inflation, will we be able to buy a 1TB SSD as part of a motherboard in 2016 for the added cost of $25?. We will also need greater cooling too. Shrinking the size of a PC/Phone will then be limited by the fans <grin>.

 

[neuroman]

I used to run a 2 SSD RAID 0 Array using Snow Leopard First and Lion later, mostly to get more space available for software installation. I did not notice a very significant boost from using a single SSD on everyday stuff (boot time, program launch, etc). I can only remember that my sustained writes went up quite a bit to the mid 250s with the Kinngston SSD now 100+ drives.