I am getting SSDs and I am wondering is it better to:
have 2 SSDs,Raid-0 them and have an external backup when one SSD fails?
or just have them at Raid-1 so if anything fails, I can back all my files up?
I am planning to make a rig that does gaming, editing, 3D rendering, coding, stream broadcasting, and animations. Here is the rig specs.
if you're going to have an external backup, raid 0 all the way
if you're editing, 3d rendering and coding you'll get angry if your drive fails, so no RAID0. Even if you backed up your data every few days you might loos a few days and that's a lot!
I'd go with RAID1. But make backups! Always do them. If you get a high voltage, your computer burns or anything else both drives will fail and the data is gone. Have your backed up data somewhere else.
You don't need RAID 0 on SSDs that use SATA. You will get next to nothing from it (or so I hear). Raid 1 is the only one you could want for the redundancy, but seeing as how they will be cloned, both would ideally give out at around the same time due to writing the exact same data. It's just common sense, right?
I don't know if this is possible or efficient, but for redundancy it sounds like you would do best with a RAID 1 array between an SSD and a small HDD. That way once the SSD gives out, your data is still stored on the HDD, which has a longer lifespan and isn't affected much by how much has been written on it throughout its lifespan.
I could be wrong here, so you should get more opinions on this.
I never recommend RAID 0. The performance gains are supposed to be negligible for SSDs. RAID 1 offers slight performance boost (if any boost can be had), and redundancy. Clear choice, in my eyes.
RAID 1 offers slight performance boost
No, it doesn't.
edit: to expand it a little: it might even get slower because writing and reading must be done on all drives, that means that the slower drive will be the bottleneck and can hinder a faster drive.
sets up jbod into a single logical volume problem solved... but seriously id look into using the ssd's and have a few mechanical hdd's in raid 5 for backups.
I have two ssd's in raid 0 with an external hdd. My read/ writes (when I first got installed my drives) was sitting at 850Mbps vs 500 on just the single drive. I enjoy my drives and I have not had one fail yet. I would only recomend it if you are able to back up.