840 Pro in Raid 0, Setup help

[Johnjdpower]

I am rebuilding my rig and have just purchased 2 840pro 256gb SSDs with the goal of placing them in a RAID 0 config for performance. After browsing online, I did not find too many definitive guides to walk through this process correctly with SSDs. I have never configured a RAID before and just want to make sure I perform the steps in the correct order as to not have redundant work involved. Thanks for any help that can be provided.

This is what my rig will be upgraded to:

CPU: 3770k

Mobo: DZ77GA-70k

Cooling: H100i

RAM: 4x 4GB Vengeance 1600Mhz

Sound Card: SoundBlaster Recon 3D Fatal1ty Pro

PSU: Coolmax 750W

GPU: HD 5750 (2 in crossfire)

[Oisin Maguire]

Put both of the drives in the intels 6Gbps sata, turn the computer on go into bios and set them as a raid 0 (the hardest part will probly be navigating the bios/uefi). it should be as simple as click click done.

Nice setup.

[Ssoele]

First, connect both drives to the Intel 6Gb/s ports.

Second, go into the BIOS/UEFI and set your controller mode to RAID.

And last, after saving the BIOS, you should get an extra screen when you boot up where you can set up the RAID 0

[Johnjdpower]

Thanks for the starting help. Just to clarify, the steps above are to be done prior to windows 7 install?

After installing windows do I then update the intel RST? Or do I download the floppy version of intel RST and load those drivers for install?

[Oisin Maguire]

yes you do this before you install windows as it will clear both drives of any data on them.

Just download the latest version of intels rapid storage technology no need to have a floppy version

[Johnjdpower]

Thank you for all of the help! Wish me luck ;)

[Johnjdpower]

One other question regarding the backup of this RAID 0. Does anyone have any preferred backup methods to ensure that my information is essentially "imaged" to another drive for quick restore?

FYI -- I will have 3 other HDDs in this setup (1x 500GB, 1x 1TB, 1x 2TB) all 7200 RPM seagate.

Thanks again for any help that can be provided.

[Whaler_99]

Question - WHY are you putting those two drives in RAID0? Honestly, for real world performance, you cannot saturate a single SDD. The only people who really need a RAID0 SSD setup are those who are going to pound the beajesus out of them to do insane benchmarking. Honestly, your still constrained by so many other things, like... memory, CPU, Windows... the user. :)

If you are really concerned about backups and such, run them in a RAID1 setup. Intel is pretty good now with RAID1 calculations on the new boards and using SSD's in RAID1 will negate some of the performance hit you might take. Just food for thought.

I have had a few people tell me that "besides" performance (ya right) they do it for the extra space. Really? Buy a single, bigger SSD. It will have even better performance. Typically a 60GB is outperformed by a 120GB which is outperformed by a 240GB and so on.... Running in RAID0 also increased your chances of failure. If anything happens to either drive, you lose it all... More food for thought. :)

[Johnjdpower]

Question - WHY are you putting those two drives in RAID0? Honestly' date=' for real world performance, you cannot saturate a single SDD. The only people who really need a RAID0 SSD setup are those who are going to pound the beajesus out of them to do insane benchmarking. Honestly, your still constrained by so many other things, like... memory, CPU, Windows... the user. :) If you are really concerned about backups and such, run them in a RAID1 setup. Intel is pretty good now with RAID1 calculations on the new boards and using SSD's in RAID1 will negate some of the performance hit you might take. Just food for thought. I have had a few people tell me that "besides" performance (ya right) they do it for the extra space. Really? Buy a single, bigger SSD. It will have even better performance. Typically a 60GB is outperformed by a 120GB which is outperformed by a 240GB and so on.... Running in RAID0 also increased your chances of failure. If anything happens to either drive, you lose it all... More food for thought. :)[/quote']

Thanks for that. I purchased the first one around Christmas time and I can't return it. So I want the extra space so I bought a second one. :/