I used RAID 0 (2 disks) for several years. The speed increase on the drives and load reduction on each drive is substantial, but SATA III SSDs have made RAID 0 pretty redundant nowadays.

If you use RAID 0 a good automated backup policy is absolutely essential. Well, backups are essential anyway, but more so with RAID 0. Over 4 years I had two disks fail and without backups all the data would have been lost. Now I just use a single SSD.

BRuys
With the ubiquitous availability of SSDs, I don't think RAID-0 has the same appeal as it once did.

Let's just focus on the subject of this topic is: speed, performance.
Obviously, a backup routine is essential. I myself have two automated daily backup processes, of the entire disk partitions, one to External HDD, other to Cloud.
Thus, the risk of data loss is the same using RAID-0 or not.
So, in any environment, backup is everything.
 
Now talking about performance. I read some benchmarks tests, I got so far to the following conclusions (all about SSD): 

1. Raid-0 is faster in almost all cases. According to this test, it is absurdly FASTER sequential transfers (large files) and slightly faster in random transfers. 
2. Still others argue that Raid-0 is best in any situation like this article.

However, when we use large sample libraries (I have almost 2 tb of samples), the price to store it all in SSD is, at least today, much more expensive than using HDD.
 
In short, in my opinion, if you use a lot of disk space and want more performance, Raid-0 in one (or more) HDDs is still the best and cheapest solution.

Roger I am also wondering about the new "3D" SSD's that are just now coming out. It's predicted that these drives will eventually cause all SSD prices to fall. Their performance is better than the regular "2D" SSD's
 
For performance, it all revolves around the SATA bus. SSDs already saturating this bus, so a new bus has to be adapted before we can really see performance boosts more than we have now.
 
As far as sample libraries, I think Ram would have a bigger impact than the drive. Unless we are talking about "streaming" samples. Then I would say that SSD would benefit this process and would also get a bigger boost when the new "3D" SSD's become available along with the new bus.
 
 

For huge sample libraries then HDD storage certainly makes economic sense. For less huge libraries SDDs have an advantage in seek time over HDDs in any configuration, so might work out more efficient. I don't use samples other than drums much so I've never needed to worry about them, the maximum I'm ever likely to need fit easily into the available RAM.

The many GB of photographs, videos and media files I've got are currently on HDD thanks to economics (though Photoshop uses SSD space as a scratch pad which does pay off).

One advantage SSDs have over HDD RAID arrays in DAWs or video editing machines is that SSDs are silent. They also draw less power and run much cooler than HDDs so a lower wattage fanless psu is viable and fewer case fans are needed to dump heat, again making things quieter.

Configuring an SSD setup is going to get interesting as drive prices drop. A multi-drive setup all on SSD should be very, very fast if load sharing is set up carefully. As Grem says, the SATA bus can be the limiting factor with current technology.

In my tests, RAID-0 speedup large concurrent access significantly. For safety reason, I use 10 or 01. But that is with 6 disks in parallel (so in my case 12 disks in total) and good dedicated hardware controller. I use 3ware/LSI. Failure rate is acceptable (I use many of them over last 10 years). Since hardware pure, RAID operations do not consume extra CPU.
But what is your data throughput and total samples size of typical project? It can happened that 256GB RAM will be cheaper and faster... On the other hand, 16cores system with 256GB RAM and 60TB of disks in whatever RAID you prefer are reasonable in price these days.

My question is how do you really benefit from the RAID 0 speed increase? Could your DAW not cope before?

Doktor Avalanche
My question is how do you really benefit from the RAID 0 speed increase? Could your DAW not cope before?

 
In many projects I use multiple sample libraries, all using too much RAM, the load becomes too slow, whenever I open these projects.
In my case, where the deadlines are short, all the time I can save will be a benefit.
Of course, the whole set has to collaborate, motherboard, memory, processor, etc. But a major bottleneck has always been the HDD.

Grem
Roger I am also wondering about the new "3D" SSD's that are just now coming out. It's predicted that these drives will eventually cause all SSD prices to fall. Their performance is better than the regular "2D" SSD's
 
For performance, it all revolves around the SATA bus. SSDs already saturating this bus, so a new bus has to be adapted before we can really see performance boosts more than we have now.
 
As far as sample libraries, I think Ram would have a bigger impact than the drive. Unless we are talking about "streaming" samples. Then I would say that SSD would benefit this process and would also get a bigger boost when the new "3D" SSD's become available along with the new bus.
 
 

Very intersting: http://fossbytes.com/inte...acity-at-lower-prices/

rogeriodec
My question is how do you really benefit from the RAID 0 speed increase? Could your DAW not cope before?

 
 

Doktor AvalancheIn many projects I use multiple sample libraries, all using too much RAM, the load becomes too slow, whenever I open these projects.
In my case, where the deadlines are short, all the time I can save will be a benefit.
Of course, the whole set has to collaborate, motherboard, memory, processor, etc. But a major bottleneck has always been the HDD.

It really can't save you that much time in this scenario. For an extra ten seconds or something the time and effort configuring? Guess I'm old school. When the 2" tape had to be rewound at the end of every playback it gave us time to ponder, think and chat with the band.

I agree with the good Doktor ...I don't see it being feasible to do that. I'd love to see a comprehensive head-to-head comparison for my own edification, but it wouldn't be worth paying for. I'd also like to know who does the serious heavy-lifting to make getting 12 ssds worth it.