Many people come to me asking if they should go with Solid State hard drives, or a RAID 0 Config, i usually answer “RAID”, But that is not exactly how you can make such a decision.
Raid adapters are one factor, the slowest disk in your RAID set is another, Memory on the adapter (Caching) is a big deal.
Let me start with the simpler stuff for sometimes you just want a 1 word answer.
1- Raid: Much much better for Large Files, in fact (Oops, there goes the one word answer) a single hard drive is faster than Solid state for large files.
2- Solid State (Flash Drives) for Random access is (SOMETIMES) faster, but if you have a really good RAID controller with lets say 128MB on it, Raid.
Raid Arithmetic can be done either by the controller or your computer’s CPU, Surely by the controller is better, but if you have a powerful CPU, and the Job requires more transfer than CPU, the justification of cost can only be done in very serious computing environments. The CPU load comes from the Driver that does all the math.
Now more reasons to go RAID
1- Cost/GB: Flash disks are not only expensive, Do the math (Hint: Cost/Size = Cost per Gigabit).
2- Flexibility: You can make it fast, fast and Big (Usually the same depending on your controller), Fast and Safe, Safe, Etc…
3- Other Uses: Once you find out you did not need this much bandwidth from your hard drive, You can take the raid set apart and have more hard drives (Unless your RAID controller already supports JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Disks), You can also use your hard drives in enclosures or as nas storage or even take them apart and see what you could have seen for free on the internet.
4- Buffer, NCQ, a nice feature not applicable to Solid State, RAM is faster than Flash memory, and for some tasks, when you write the data and read it soon afterwards, the disk can be very fast. When you are writing small amounts of data, they can go into the ram, and the disk will migrate them to the plates at it’s earliest convenience, NCQ is a great feature that i don’t want to get into right now because i have to get back to work.
5- SATA II: Having SATA2 on a solid state (Flash) hard drive makes no sense, No RAM is inside, and the top speed is less than 1.5Gb/s, while in the hard disk, you can make use of the doubled speed especially when you are writing to the buffer (Or reading from the buffer)
6- The more the merrier, add disks (Will sometimes require a better controller), Add disks and make it faster (NOTE: When you add disks, you need to take out your data, make a larger array then copy it back on) so you need somewhere to copy to
Downside or RAID
1- Shock tolerance is low, especially when the disks are spinning
2- Power, they consume more power, but you should not be very concerned to tell you the truth, everyone is taking about hard disk power consumption like it was a big deal, let me tell you something, your idle processor consumes much more power, Your graphics card probably consumes triple the power, and i won’t be telling you what a busy CPU can feed on.
3- Noise: They can be very noisy, depending on the Brand and enclosure (The enclosure can be your computer case)
4- Vibration : They sometimes interfere with each other’s functionality (When vibrating the lens can sometimes miss destination), not to mention the annoyance of the vibration in the first place (Especially when it causes more noise from your computer case.
5- If you are using RAID0, one disk decides to take an unscheduled nap, all your data is lost, so you will need to have a disk as big as the RAID striped set for backup, Using a level of mirroring can mess up your write performance.
So, here i guess you can tell, Raid is better for MOST purposes, Solid state, the expensive alternative for missions where seek time is important. But don’t expect something much faster than RAID, Not if you have a good controller anyway
NOTE: Solid state drives are better on Laptops, the physical size of a laptop does not allow for Raid Setup, and is expected to get shock every once in a while, I personally use an eSATA expresscard adapter to connect to a 5 disk enclosure, but that does not do me much good when on the go.
Notes for me: When you come back for editing, tell them about SCSI VS SATA Raid, also about what adapters exist, and what adapters not to use, What do you need to get efficiency, how come Antivirus software has anything to do with this, etc…