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I have the choice of setting up a system:

  • with two SSD Drives in RAID 1 mode as my boot drive for Windows 7 64-bit, with the Program Files and User folders moved to a second regular hard drive, also configured using RAID 1.

or…

  • set up a single SSD Drive (120 GB or 256 GB) as a cache drive using Intel Rapid Storage Technology combined with two normal hard drives configured as RAID 1.

Which setup would have the faster hard drive performance over the life of the computer, and why?

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  • Benchmark it and see . . . a lot will depend on your usage profile, but my guess would be that the first would be of more benefit than the second as you'll remove the cache layer . . . .
    – ernie
    Nov 1, 2013 at 17:55

1 Answer 1

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Intel Rapid Storage Technology will give you the better performance, Picking a single drive vs using Raid 1 doesn't change performance. It only increases reliability.

If you really want a performance boost I would say set up a system with two SSD Drives in Raid 0 as a cache Drive using Intel Rapid Storage Technology combined with two normal hard drives configured as Raid 0. Not only is it faster but it also allows you to buy cheaper drives and gain far more hard drive space. At the cost of reliability. If its not a mission critical computer then just make sure you run nightly backups.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/rapid-storage-technology.html

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    "Picking a single drive vs using Raid 1 doesn't change performance. It only increases reliability." That is not exactly true, it does not change write performance but any RAID controller worth it's salt will divvy up the reads between the two disks to increase read performance. Nov 1, 2013 at 18:28
  • @scott chamberlain - This might be technically correct, but with the low latencies of SSD and the fact that their is no raid controller in the system (Intel Rapid Storage Technology is fake raid, using the CPU), and they system does not appear to be a server suggests Daves answer is practically correct.
    – davidgo
    Nov 1, 2013 at 19:06
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    Removing RAID from the question, it sounds like the original question was will my system be faster if I install the OS to an SSD and keep my data on spinning disk, or will it be faster if I install everything to a spinning disk, and use IRST to create an SSD cache drive? In this case, I would think for most users, installing the OS to the SSD (and assuming that page/swap are kept on the OS drive), the first option is better than the latter, as I would predict a higher percentage of operations would be on the SSD, while in the second, only certain read/writes will leverage the cache . . .
    – ernie
    Nov 1, 2013 at 21:10
  • It sounds like you're answering if RAID 1 mirror (spinning disk?), will be faster than than a system using an Intel RST setup, which I don't think is what the OP is asking . . .
    – ernie
    Nov 1, 2013 at 21:11

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