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Thread ID: 142336	2016-06-13 12:08:00	SSD Raid0 Upgrade	wratterus (105)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1421793	2016-06-13 12:08:00	My personal rig is getting pretty long in the tooth now. It's running an i7-860, 16GB RAM, HD7970. One of the original Socket 1156 Lynnfield i7 processors - 45nm! Only SATA2 (3Gbps), no USB3...things have come a long way since then. I would really like to upgrade, but don't have the budget right now. Anyway, I've just been running a 240GB Sandisk SSD for the OS drive, with a 3TB drive for storage, and 2x 4TB drives in the NAS in RAID1 for important storage and backup. Recently I've been wanting a bit more space, and a bit more speed. Rather than buy a larger SSD, I decided to just buy another 240GB Sandisk (only $130) and RAID0 it with my current SSD for a little more performance and more space on C:. Very easy to do without reinstalling: Enable safe boot mode from MS Config Reboot into BIOS, enable RAID Install the Intel RAID Controller driver in safe boot mode, then reboot normally and install the RST software. Clone the SSD to temporary drive. Install the new SSD. Create the RAID0 (16kb stripe size) from the Intel RAID Manager Clone from the temp drive back to the new RAID Run benchmarks I first ran a benchmark comparing the original to the RAID0, all with the default Intel settings. An awesome improvement in some areas, not so much in others. I Enabled Cache Write-Back (wouldn't recommend doing this unless you either have a good UPS, or really enjoy reinstalling Windows regularly) and re-ran the benchmarks - much better now. I'm pretty much maxing out the 3Gbps SATA controller, and in some areas am getting much faster speeds than I thought I would. See the image below - first bench is the single SSD. Second is with the default settings in RAID0, and the third is with Cache Write-Back enabled. 7248 Not really sure if anyone will find this interesting, but it's a cheap and easy way to get some more performance out of older hardware. If anyone else has done a similar thing, I'd be interested to know what sort of performance increase you've noted. :) In this case, there is definitely a noticeable increase with general usage - opening and working in larger programs (Lightroom for example) is way faster than before, and the PC just 'feels' a bit snappier. Second image is just some PC eye candy while I was waiting for the drives to clone... 7249	wratterus (105)
1421794	2016-06-13 19:12:00	An i7 try a dual core duo like we still run and no SSD	gary67 (56)
1421795	2016-06-13 23:31:00	Useful information for anyone considering the same thing. Does RAID support TRIM commands in the setup or do you need to do it with a utility? I recall that was an issue with early SSDs and the RAID controllers on the hardware around at the time, not sure if it's just a driver issue or BIOS related though. Something to look into perhaps. Most articles I've read about using RAID with SSD's have concluded there's not really any benefit to it. www.tomshardware.com However in your case with the older SATA controllers limitations it does seem to be worthwhile. Personally I've just always replaced my C: drive with a larger one when it gets too small - but that costs more too. The other thing I've done is just installed a second SSD and moved programs onto it. I have Steam installed on my D: drive which is the old SSD from my previous build and have moved Blizzard games onto it also (WoW & Diablo 3) because they don't take much effort to transfer. My C: drive is about 65% used and I just install most new stuff to the D: instead.	dugimodo (138)
1421796	2016-06-14 02:26:00	Thanks. Bit of a grey area with TRIM. As far as I can tell, it should be working. The fsutil query returns the right result, and the RST software says it supports it. The Sandisk utility does not see the drives correctly when they are in a RAID 0, so it's not possible to check from there. Do you know of a way to check for sure?	wratterus (105)
1421797	2016-06-14 02:52:00	72507251 I'm thinking that confirms it's working.	wratterus (105)
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