0

Current situation

My System (Fujitsu Celsius M730) is currently using the following disk Setup:

Intel C600 series chipset SATA AHCI Controller

  • Port0: Samsung SSD 830 (latest firmware)
  • Port1: DVD

Intel C600 series chipset SAS RAID (SATA mode) controller

  • Port2: SATA HD 1TB (part of raid0 array0)
  • Port3: SATA HD 1TB (part of raid0 array0)
  • Port4: SATA HD 1TB (part of raid0 array0)
  • Port5: SATA HD 4TB (backup disk)

Port 0 and 1 are SATA III capable, port 2, 3, 4, 5 only SATA II!

Now I am thinking about replacing the HD RAID disks with 3x1TB Samsung 850 SSDs and plug them to a new D2616 controller [specs] (provides SATA III).

I am running many virtual machines on my Windows 10 Pro Hyper-V workstation and do heavy photo editing. This is why I need low latency and high bandwidth storage subsystem.

Question

1) The Samsung 850 SSD PRO series is capable of NCQ, is that feature worth the extra money over the EVO series in that configuration?

2) What do you think about this setup in general? Would it be better (in terms of performance) to only have 2x2TB 850 SSDs?

3) Any other considerations I should do?

4) Will I be able to upgrade the SSD firmware using Samsungs Magician Software? Will it effect the RAID Array?

NB

I am aware that the availabilty of my RAID 0 array decreases to the exponent of three... this is what I have my backup disk for, so please let's not get into that discussion. Thank you.

0

1 Answer 1

2

1) The Samsung 850 SSD PRO series is capable of NCQ, is that feature worth the extra money over the EVO series in that configuration?

Practically all drives have that feature, including the EVO. The Pro is a faster drive, but it has nothing to do with NCQ.

2) What do you think about this setup in general? Would it be better (in terms of performance) to only have 2x2TB 850 SSDs?

No. SSD performance tends to plateu at about 256-512GB. Above this, larger SSDs are limited by the SATA interface, so multiple drives will be faster.

3) Any other considerations I should do?

If speed and performance are your concerns (as opposed to cost), PCIe (and by extension, NVMe) SSDs are going to be much much faster.

4) Will I be able to upgrade the SSD firmware using Samsungs Magician Software? Will it effect the RAID Array?

No. You have to remove drives from the array to modify the firmware.

2
  • Thanks for replying. The D2616 specs do not mention anything about ATA TRIM Support. Will this be an issue? Nov 12, 2015 at 16:13
  • It's a standard LSI/Avago SAS2108 chip. Whether that supports TRIM I don't know but it's a widely used card so it should be easy to find out.
    – qasdfdsaq
    Nov 12, 2015 at 16:24

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .