Setting up ssd raid 0 before installing OS

[officiallyasimulator]

Hey guys, i was wondering if i could setup raid 0 on two 256gb MX100s from the bios before installing windows 8.1? 

 

Edit: mobo is ASrock Z97 extreme 6

[X1XNobleX1X]

Hey guys, i was wondering if i could setup raid 0 on two 256gb MX100s from the bios before installing windows 8.1? 

 

Edit: mobo is ASrock Z97 extreme 6

You're going to have to setup the raid 0 before installing Windows.

I'm just going to read the manual, BRB. 

You should just be able to set SATA to "RAID" Instead of ACHI/IDE. 

That will enable you to select RAID options on next bootup. 

 

 

EDIT: Under "Advanced" there should be "SATA mode selection", select RAID.

[Columbo]

You want your RAID 0 to look like this in all it's performance glory. Consult your Motherboard manual. Go into Bios and set to RAID like the above post stated. You have to pair your drives in the bios and need to install the utility software via a 3.5" floppy which usually requires an external USB floppy drive. Motherboards today do not have PATA connections. The other route is creating a boot disk via CD or DVD with included software in your driver disk. I have a selective memory and cannot tell you how I put my RAID utility on my computer. Consult your motherboard manual, CTRL-I is what ASUS boards use to enter into the RAID utility where you pair your drives together. I would suggest a 64KB stripe. Many use 128KB but I have never been conventional. I have two separate RAID 0 arrays on my computer. 

 

Note, I have not compressed my RAID 0 SSD's yet as I am loading more games. In my free time I challenge people to races to see who can load BF4 maps first. I spent a couple hours this morning in a trash talking speed test round between maps. I met a guy who has an SSD for his OS 60GB and 128GB as a standalone for games. His 128GB SSD was quite impressive as a stand alone solution. 

 

If you have any more questions I will be around solving mysteries.

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

That's a nice graph there.  Mine (2x Vertex4 in RAID 0 with 128KB striping) doesn't do anything like that.

 

 

[Seq]

Raid 0 is bad way to go.

 

There is no redundancy. You'll lose everything, if something breaks.

 

Raid 0 is ok addition to raid 1 or 5.

 

If you want to add space and don't want add letters, like d-drive, you can mount that another drive as part of your ntfs. If drivebreaks, you'll still have something in another.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

No it's not.  0 is fine as long as you make regular backups, which you should be doing anyway.  Never trust a RAID array (not even RAID 1) to keep your data safe. 

[Columbo]

That's a nice graph there.  Mine (2x Vertex4 in RAID 0 with 128KB striping) doesn't do anything like that.

Those are good numbers. I did some research. You drive is rated at 530mb on the write and 420mb on the read speed. Those are pretty close to what you are getting on your drives. The 256GB model of the OCZ Vertex4 drives have a max write of 525mb. 

 

My Toshiba Q Series are rated at 552MB read and 501MB write. Your OCZ drives have Toshiba parts inside and they bought OCZ in the last few years. I try to educate people on commerce and how the electronics industry works in SSD drives. Samsung and Toshiba make a large percentage of the NAND memory chips you find in SSD's today. There is a Toshiba Q pro series of the 120GB that reads at 554MB and writes at 512MB. 

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/ocz_vertex_460_ssd_benchmark_review,2.html

 

This is why Toshiba keeps a low profile in the SSD industry with their products as they sell many of the memory NAND chips to their competition and other vendors. Samsung doesn't have that same problem because of their 840/850 Pro line of SSD's. 

 

I picked up a second Q Series drive because I promised myself I would make a RAID 0 with my SSD when I built it in late 2013. I am happy with the results I have. My motherboard only has two SATA 6.0 ports. This means I am finished with two drives. My other RAID 0 in on the SATA 3.0 ports and my Samsung's have not skipped a beat in many years in different RAID 0 setups. 

[Columbo]

Raid 0 is bad way to go.

 

There is no redundancy. You'll lose everything, if something breaks.

 

Raid 0 is ok addition to raid 1 or 5.

 

If you want to add space and don't want add letters, like d-drive, you can mount that another drive as part of your ntfs. If drivebreaks, you'll still have something in another.

I have two separate RAID 0 arrays. I backup data on the big 2TB array. Hard drives are no more likely to fail in a RAID 0 than a single drive solution. Statistically if one drive fails you are out of luck but if neither fail you have highly reliable drives. Those 32GB flash drives come in handy if you have important data to backup. RAID 0 scales to nearly 100% of total performance of a single drive in a two drive solution. Many people find this hard to believe. It's like the yin and yang. Two halves make a whole drive solution. 

[Seq]

No it's not.  0 is fine as long as you make regular backups, which you should be doing anyway.  Never trust a RAID array (not even RAID 1) to keep your data safe. 

 

That's true, raid is not a backup. 

 

Unfortunately one can't backup as often as needed.

 

Ofc one can use replication.

 

Imo performance in raid 1 is quite good with decent raid-card. Those can read simultaneously from all drives.

[Columbo]

That's true, raid is not a backup. 

 

Unfortunately one can't backup as often as needed.

 

Ofc one can use replication.

 

Imo performance in raid 1 is quite good with decent raid-card. Those can read simultaneously from all drives.

 

Can you see the genius of me having multiple RAID 0's on the same computer system? If backup files on the opposing RAID 0 array. If one fails I have a backup in the other. 

Can you see the genius of me having multiple RAID 0's on the same computer system? If backup files on the opposing RAID 0 array. If one fails I have a backup in the other. 

[Seq]

I have two separate RAID 0 arrays. I backup data on the big 2TB array. Hard drives are no more likely to fail in a RAID 0 than a single drive solution. Statistically if one drive fails you are out of luck but if neither fail you have highly reliable drives. Those 32GB flash drives come in handy if you have important data to backup. RAID 0 scales to nearly 100% of total performance of a single drive in a two drive solution. Many people find this hard to believe. It's like the yin and yang. Two halves make a whole drive solution. 

 

Quite typical solution might be system in raid 1 in two disks and data in raid 5 in three disk and one hot spare. Data can also be in raid 1 or even in 1+0. There also limited amount of drives one can fit to system.

 

At least in scsi-system it's better to have multiple channels. In that way read and white in system don't affect to reads and writes in data.

 

And if you have two drives in raid 0, it's twice as likely to fail as one drive.

 

I had two drive fails almost at the same time in raid 5 pack. Actually in two. 10 and 14 drives scsi-packs.

 

Of-course hw-vendors try to deliver as reliable drives as possible. They might take drives from three different manufactures and test those and accept two drives. Still there is problems in drives. And if drives are in sequence from factory as those usually are, it's quite common that those drives fails in clusters.

[Seq]

Can you see the genius of me having multiple RAID 0's on the same computer system? If backup files on the opposing RAID 0 array. If one fails I have a backup in the other. 

 

It's like raid 10, with more effort. 

 

At least in my experience backup can be slower solutions, cause that write is quite sequential, compared to more random in system.

 

Cache in raid-card matters much...

[Columbo]

Some of the people who setup RAID 0's use non matching drive by either make or model. Some even use different sized drives and you wonder why their RAID 0 fails. It's very hard to have drives mirror themselves as one drive if they are not an exact mirror image of each other identically. My next project it to get angled SATA III connectors for my drives. The right angle stuff so my plugs are not rubbing or touching the case. I may also get a couple of angled 15 pin hard drive connectors. I have a couple of those already but I need another project to do. I just got my ebay bucks certificate and have free $$$ to spend on ebay. 

[officiallyasimulator]

The raid will be backed up to a 2tb wd black drive about once a month.

[Columbo]

That is the spirit.