Switching to RAID

[xNeon]

I have an ASUS P8Z77 - WS motherboard which supports RAID 0 on the chipset and has drivers for it. I have two of the same SSDs (Crucial M4 128GB), one of which has a windows 7 install. The other drive is empty. Is there a way I can put these two drive in RAID 0 without having to do a fresh install? I have licensed software that doesn't seem to take well to being installed multiple times, if I can avoid it I'd like to.

[Wiff]

I have an ASUS P8Z77 - WS motherboard which supports RAID 0 on the chipset and has drivers for it. I have two of the same SSDs (Crucial M4 128GB), one of which has a windows 7 install. The other drive is empty. Is there a way I can put these two drive in RAID 0 without having to do a fresh install? I have licensed software that doesn't seem to take well to being installed multiple times, if I can avoid it I'd like to.

you can clone windows to another hdd, then format the ssd, setup the raid array and then use some cloning programm which you can boot from and clone windows from thehdd to the raid array

[xNeon]

you can clone windows to another hdd, then format the ssd, setup the raid array and then use some cloning programm which you can boot from and clone windows from thehdd to the raid array

What program would you use to close an install

[Wiff]

What program would you use to close an install

try out clonezilla

[asquirrel]

Note: If either hard drive fails while in RAID 0, the data contents of both hard drives is considered lost.

 

RAID1 can give similar read (not write) performance to RAID 0, however not with on-board RAID. The reason is that a physical RAID card with a battery backup unit will read from whichever disk isn't busy at the time. On-board RAID isn't smart enough to do this. The reason for the battery backup (BBU) is twofold:

 

1. If the card supports a BBU, then it is a 'real' raid card, and not the onboard raid section of your MOBO plastered onto a PCI board.

2. Some raid cards don't enable their performance features without a BBU

 

If you are wondering, a proper raid card will run you about $350. A BBU another $150.

[Wiff]

Note: If either hard drive fails while in RAID 0, the data contents of both hard drives is considered lost.

 

RAID1 can give similar read (not write) performance to RAID 0, however not with on-board RAID. The reason is that a physical RAID card with a battery backup unit will read from whichever disk isn't busy at the time. On-board RAID isn't smart enough to do this. The reason for the battery backup (BBU) is twofold:

 

1. If the card supports a BBU, then it is a 'real' raid card, and not the onboard raid section of your MOBO plastered onto a PCI board.

2. Some raid cards don't enable their performance features without a BBU

 

If you are wondering, a proper raid card will run you about $350. A BBU another $150.

how do these cards work?Where do you connect them?

[asquirrel]

how do these cards work?Where do you connect them?

They fit into a PCI slot, just like a graphics card. As for how they work...well, they work just like the SATA subsystem on your motherboard, but they have ASICs specialized around doing RAID. For RAID 1 or RAID 0, such a card is gratuitous overkill. If you have 4 or more disks, they become more useful, as you can do RAID 10 and see some real performance gains, or RAID 5 if you really want capacity, with fault tolerance. I was simply making you aware the option existed. It doesn't really make sense to spend $500 to make $200 of storage go faster.

[xNeon]

Note: If either hard drive fails while in RAID 0, the data contents of both hard drives is considered lost.

RAID1 can give similar read (not write) performance to RAID 0, however not with on-board RAID. The reason is that a physical RAID card with a battery backup unit will read from whichever disk isn't busy at the time. On-board RAID isn't smart enough to do this. The reason for the battery backup (BBU) is twofold:

1. If the card supports a BBU, then it is a 'real' raid card, and not the onboard raid section of your MOBO plastered onto a PCI board.

2. Some raid cards don't enable their performance features without a BBU

If you are wondering, a proper raid card will run you about $350. A BBU another $150.

Nothing on these two disks is irreplaceable, all of my content and work are on separate drives and backed up. So there is no real risk for me when doing this. I'm just trying to squeeze a little bit of performance out of my hardware without spending money. Does RAID 0 put strain on the drives?

[asquirrel]

Nothing on these two disks is irreplaceable, all of my content and work are on separate drives and backed up. So there is no real risk for me when doing this. I'm just trying to squeeze a little bit of performance out of my hardware without spending money. Does RAID 0 put strain on the drives?

Ah, in that case, RAID 0 is the way to go. What do you mean by strain? You mean make them wear out faster? No.