How to get a large ssd raid 0 going without a raid card

[jeff3864]

I have heard that you don't need a raid card for raid 0 and was hoping that it was possible to just use some kind of sata expansion card to hook up about 4 to 8 ssd's in raid 0. Would they all have to be on this card, or could i also use the two sata 3 ports on my motherboard twoards my total?

[Money]

Firstly, RAID 0 with SSD's isn't always the best idea.

[fardawg]

Yes it is possible to setup a software raid with windows and you should be able to use the the sata expansion card and the motherboards sata ports no problem. The only thing i would say is if you can get the money for the raid card it would be a great benefit because software raid is usually very slow. Software raid relays on the computers cpu to write the data which cuts down the performance of your system, were if you had a raid card windows just simply tells the card to save the data and the card will do all the work instead of stressing your cpu.

[dav1257]

If u are simply using ur comp for gaming then i think raid 0 is what u want.

I have my OS and like 4 games installed at any 1 time and thats it. So if i lose a drive i just need to get a new 1 and build a new raid. Time consuming but then i understand rebuilding a raid array is anyway. No experience doing it that way tho.

[jeff3864]

Is the cpu hit really that big? I have a 3570k running at 4.0ghz what kind of hit would i be looking at for something like 6 drives running in raid 0?

[Dragon_Cannon]

Is the cpu hit really that big? I have a 3570k running at 4.0ghz what kind of hit would i be looking at for something like 6 drives running in raid 0?

RAID 0 might not hit it hard but if you want to so it you should get the raid card as you will get both the storage and the speed with a raid card whereas software you will only get the storage.

The performance hit would vary depending upon what you are doing with the array

[jeff3864]

I would not be getting the performance boost of raid 0 with software raid? Why not? I thought that it would still be sending the data to the drives simultaneously thus giving me 6x the performance theoretically (would be fine if it was only about 5x real world). Also, is it possible to do raid 0 with an odd number of drives, say 5?

[Prettyfinej]

What's the benefit of raid 0 for gaming if already on ssd?

[Eric1024]

I don't mean to sound disrespectful but why in the world do you need that kind of speed? Also, 6 decent ssd's are going to cost you 600-800$ US, and you can get a card that will implement raid 0 for 100-150$. Raid cards only get expensive when you get into cards with lots of server-oriented features, lots of ports, or higher raid levels such as 5, 6, 50, 60, 100, etc.

[Norco]

Do you actually need the speed? Seriously, do you?

I think if you're going to spend that much on SSD's a RAID card shouldn't hurt you too much.

[Norco]

Firstly, RAID 0 with SSD's isn't always the best idea.

Can you explain why exactly?

[Guest]

As far as I'm aware, RAID setups don't carry TRIM commands to the SSDs. Unless you're using it for very intensive workstation applications, you probably don't need and won't even notice the raw speed of a RAID 0 of SSDs and will benefit from better performance over time with normal AHCI SSDs with TRIM.