SSD VS HDD RAID -0 VS SINGLE HDD COMPARISON
Last week when I was looking around for a ssd I wasn’t sure where I was going to land in this world of this new solid state drive technology , but I knew it was faster than my current raid 0 setup without the raid, but that it also had its problems , price , controllers , brands, trim or no trim , raid or no raid , memory degration , supported operating systems , windows 7 ssd tweaking , Microsoft or Intel drivers and the list goes on , so like never before I really had to do my research, which paid off and got my what I wanted, A faster snappier more responsive system . Reason I’m posting this up here is for anyone else looking, they can check out my benches to help them make a decision if it is worth the jump going from a single hdd or a raid-0 hdd setup to a ssd setup, I’m not showing raid benchmarks on the ssd, because it just not a logical choice right now without trim, but benchmark wise raid 0 ssd is extremely fast no doubt about it
Benchmark Setup
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P “ Intel ICHR10 Controller”
Intel Quad Core Q9650 @ 4050
G.SKILL P.I. Black (2 x 2Gb) DDR2 900
Windows 7 Pro with Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Driver 9.6.0.1014
SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80
RAID-0: 2 X WD Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB
SINGLE HDD: WD Black WD1001FALS 1TB



Recommended Items needed to make jump easy
1. A motherboard that let you wipe the drive and update bios by selecting legacy ide mode “I’ve heard of some amd boards having problems.
2. Pick a ssd drive that supports trim so your drive will maintain its speed , by windows 7 maintaining it
3. You can pick any operating system but XP and Vista have to be manually adjusted, Windows 7 will automatically adjust everything for a maintenance free drive
4. Fresh os install with updated drivers for motherboard
My system was loaded last week and is used

Round 1 Speed Benchmark

SINGLE HDD: WD Black WD1001FALS 1TB


RAID-0: 2 X WD Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB


SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80


As you can see here the the raid-0 easily beat the single drive, but when put against the single ssd put up a good fight but still took a heavy lose

WINNER: SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80

Round 2 File Benchmark

SINGLE HDD: WD Black WD1001FALS 1TB


RAID-0: 2 X WD Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB


SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80


Here again we see the single drive taking a beating as it cannot keep up with the massive read and write bandwidth the raid-0 and ssd setup can do, but when put
head to head the sdd hits a whopping 250mb write while the raid tops out at 175mb

WINNER:SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80

Round 3 Random Access

SINGLE HDD: WD Black WD1001FALS 1TB


RAID-0: 2 X WD Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB


SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80


Here you can see the SSD really shine , there's just no comparison blazing access times , what makes your system snappie happy , if you have like
multitasking this is where you should be

Winner: SINGLE SSD: Intel x25m G2 80

Im sure there's a lot, I didn't get into but I wanted to show some comparisons to help you make your choice , for me there's no going back after using one of these new drives