OCZ Vertex Solid State Disk's (SSD's) in RAID0

I have used many of the OCZ Vertex series SSD's over the last few months. I have also used the Intel X25-E. Both drives are top of the range in terms of performance however I have found the Vertex series to have a slight edge over the Intel purely due to the price. The OCZ Vertex has a read speed of 200MB/s and a write speed of 160MB/s. The Intel however has a read of 250MB/s and a write speed of 170MB/s.

If anyone questions the benefits of SSD's (and not just any old SSD's - you have to get the right one!) over conventional mechanical disks then just take the plunge and swap your laptop's clunker for an OCZ Vertex, you will not be disappointed!

Once you start using an SSD you will very quickly realise how much of a bottleneck drive access times and transfer rates are to the performance of your system. The real beauty of SSD's really becomes apparent though once you put them into RAID (RAID0 to be precise).

Now conventionally any sensible person wouldn't have put say 4 or 5 mechanical disks into a RAID0 configuration without some serious backup. This is because if even only one drive fails then all your data gets lost. Although this is also true for SSD's, you have to remember that SSD's are so much more reliable than mechanical disks. So for almost instant desktop access performance buy a few Vertex SSD's and put them in RAID0. You should also buy a big 1.5TB+ drive too for all your user data and as a backup drive. While it is unlikely that your RAID will fail, shit can still happen.

I have so far built two desktop PC's both with 4 x 30GB OCZ Vertex Drives in RAID0 and both have a greater than 500MB/s average throughput (that's guaranteed!) what's likely (but not so guaranteed) is that you'll get over 600MB/s average throughput like I have on both occasions.

So what you'll end up with is a single 120GB (RAID0) drive that reads and writes at over 500MB/s on average for a cost of £400. 120GB too small? Not really, this isn't for your movies and music to be stored on, this drive is for your OS and applications (the very data that is being constantly accessed). As long as you don't install any of the OS or applications on your data/backup mechanical disk then performance will be blisteringly fast.

I have tested this in XP Pro SP3 and I hear that it works under Vista too. Can't imagine it not being supported in Linux (PRONOUNCED LIN NUX not LY NUX! - Linus Torvalds created linux which is the combination of his first name and UNIX therefore LINUX! also early versions of slackware had a sound file of Linus saying "I am Linus Torvalds and I pronounce linux LIN NUX!" so get it right noobs!).

Photoshop loads in seconds, I can open 50 x IE windows faster than I can click the quick launch icon and then right click and "close group" instantly. Office apps are pretty much instant too.