Intel X25-M SSD RAID-0 Array Tested: Say Hello To Speed

It must be a day for big Intel SSD RAID arrays.  If DosPara's six drive Prime SSD-RAID server is, at $9,320, a bit rich for your blood, HotHardware have been testing out what performance you can expect from just two of Intel's X25-M 80GB solid-state drives.  Paired together in a RAID 0 (striped) setup, the team found I/O speeds pretty much double what you'd get from a single drive.

Figures vary according to what software you use to benchmark, obviously, but that basically means 396MB/s for read performance and 130MB/s write performance.  HD Tune and HD Tach, meanwhile, waver between 200MB/s and 300MB/s. 

The tests were carried out with an onboard NVIDIA RAID controller, so there could be greater improvements seen with a standalone dedicated RAID controller card.  CPU usage did rise over the single drive; up from 2.08 to 11, in fact.  Of course, the limiting factor to most people will still be the price.  Even though cheaper than the DosPara setup, two Intel X25-M 80GB drives will come in at around $600 a piece.