The test system used in this review was an HP 8300 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-3470 Ivy Bridge CPU, 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda ST250DM000 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX600 1GB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the two Samsung SSD 840 Pro drives in RAID, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer.
For simplicity's sake, I used the RAID controller built into the Intel Q77 Express chipset. I also installed version 11.6.0.1030 of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology driver and used the included utility to configure the RAID array.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - RAID 0 |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - RAID 1 |
The two SSD 840 Pros performed very well when configured in a RAID 0 array. The two drives were able to read at 1077 MB/s and write at a blistering 956.6 MB/s. The sequential read speed was also quite good when using RAID 1. However, the write speed dropped to 505.7 MB/s which is on par with what we saw in our original review when testing a single SSD 840 Pro.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the PX-256M5P's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - RAID 0 |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - RAID 1 |
When configured as a RAID 0 array, the two SSD 840 Pros were able to read at 1,081 MB/s and write at 1,050 MB/s. The read speed was again quite good in RAID 1. However, the write speed topped out at only 534 MB/s.
AS SSD:
AS SSD is a relatively new benchmark designed specifically for solid state drives. The application contains five synthetic tests used to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of a drive.
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - RAID 0 |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - RAID 1 |
