Raid 0 with Agility 3 & Vertax 3

[i_max2k2]

I have an Agility 3 and I can get a deal on Vertex 3, I'll run them on Asus Maximus 4 E-Z, which has 4 sata 3 ports, but each pair works with different controllers. I was wondering if I did do a Raid 0, how much of a difference I'd see over a single agility 3, and with a Raid 0 would I be coming close to saturating the sata bus? (someone told me this, and I wasn't sure what he meant.) And yes is it even a good idea to do a Raid 0 between a agility and a vertex drive.

[PommieB]

I've seen a number of raid set-ups with these ssd drives, each connection is capable of slightly higher than 6Gb/s, you won't saturate it each ssd is above that figure and neither are, you should be ok, I wouldn't worry about saturation.

[i_max2k2]

So I did bite the bullet and got another Agility 3 120gb. Now I was wondering is there anyway that I can use my current installation of Windows, and add the 2nd ssd to make it a Raid 0. Seems unlikely but if it can be done, I'd give it a shot, i had uninstalling everything and reinstalling windows and taking care of the save games and crap.

[ELItheICEman]

Creating the RAID0 will destroy all data on both drives. You'll have to backup your important data and start with a fresh OS install.

And coming from someone who formerly had a 4x Vertex RAID0... you won't see a difference. At all. One drive by itself is ridiculously quick already, so any performance gains will only really be visible in benchmark results. Plus, unless anything has changed, you lose TRIM support in any RAID mode.

[i_max2k2]

Originally Posted by ELItheICEman

Creating the RAID0 will destroy all data on both drives. You'll have to backup your important data and start with a fresh OS install.

And coming from someone who formerly had a 4x Vertex RAID0... you won't see a difference. At all. One drive by itself is ridiculously quick already, so any performance gains will only really be visible in benchmark results. Plus, unless anything has changed, you lose TRIM support in any RAID mode.

Lol where were you earlier, I'd not have ordered the drive if I knew what your saying.

Btw do you know of any guide, i could look at when i set this up, I have setup Raid 0 with normal hdd's with windows xp, but that was 3-4 years ago.

[ELItheICEman]

RAID0 setup should be no different with these. Go into BIOS, change from IDE/AHCI to RAID, reboot and get into the RAID setup menu as it boots up (some key to enter). From there, add both drives to a new array, small stripe size (I think 64kb is best with ICH10R, not sure) and then save/exit. Boot up with the new RAID array and install OS.

[i_max2k2]

Originally Posted by ELItheICEman

RAID0 setup should be no different with these. Go into BIOS, change from IDE/AHCI to RAID, reboot and get into the RAID setup menu as it boots up (some key to enter). From there, add both drives to a new array, small stripe size (I think 64kb is best with ICH10R, not sure) and then save/exit. Boot up with the new RAID array and install OS.

Sounds good, one think I need to take care is of partition alignment, it seem incorrect alignment messes the performance, I'll report my finding once I get this done. Thanks!

[ELItheICEman]

Alignment is only really necessary for XP installs IIRC. I think Vista and Win7 don't need the partition to be aligned, but it's still worth looking into.

[Urbanfox]

Originally Posted by ELItheICEman

And coming from someone who formerly had a 4x Vertex RAID0... you won't see a difference. At all. One drive by itself is ridiculously quick already, so any performance gains will only really be visible in benchmark results. Plus, unless anything has changed, you lose TRIM support in any RAID mode.

I disagree. I notice a difference between one Vertex 2 60GB and two in raid 0 and other setups with raid 1. Depends on what you use it for. If it's browsing the web, of course not. But with games, data intensive application, uninstalling and installing apps, etc, than absolutely. Not to mention you've doubled the space so you don't have to worry as much about filling the drive space.

Additional Comment:

Oh, and follow this:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...-SSD-ABC-Guide

[i_max2k2]

Originally Posted by Urbanfox

I disagree. I notice a difference between one Vertex 2 60GB and two in raid 0 and other setups with raid. Depends on what you use it for. If it's browsing the web, of course not. But with games, data intensive application, uninstalling and installing apps, etc, than absolutely. Not to mention you've doubled the space so you don't have to worry as much about filling the drive space.

Additional Comment:

Oh, and follow this:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...-SSD-ABC-Guide

Much appreciated, thank you!

Additional Comment:

Got it running couple days back, backed up an image from the fist ssd, and after the raid 0 install, restored the Image, the performance difference is there in some cases. Windows boot seems to have literally come down to half of what I was seeing earlier (16seconds to 8 seconds.) & Games do load slightly faster. And while I was moving some install to the ssd, the average transfer rate of moving about 20gigs came to 1gbps