Can you install software raid 0 for c:?

Brink · 01 Jun 2010

Billy,

I must agree with Greg. Unless you have some sort of need for RAID, you could get even better performance using just a good single SSD drive instead to install Windows 7 on if you have a SATA port on your motherboard and not just the old IDE ones. If you decide on a SSD, then be sure to read up on them to make sure it's a newer generation SSD and not a older and slower generation.

I'm currently running RAID 0 with 2x750GB SATA HDD drives, and the OCZ Vertex 2 50GB SSD I'm installing soon will blow the RAID out of the water in speed and performance.

SIW2 · 01 Jun 2010

LOL , Billy may want to RAID 2 SSD's

billybowden · 01 Jun 2010

Well I have always thought that there were significant performance gains through the use of raid 0 at least from a theoretical point of view. I have read that SSD aren't really any performance benefit would you agree? So are you saying a raid 0 of say four sata 2 drives connected to a pci-e x32 would not be significantly faster?

It seems that a raid 0 will only be worth it if you are doing large file operations according to the site I have listed.

I expected that the drives would work less and thus faster application launching installing and smoother running performance. To be perfectly honest I have to say that my machine is running fast and as it seems evident that there is not an outrageous performance boot I am probably just wasting money and time going to the raid path.

You would have to say that launching an application stored on drive 1 that reads data from drive2 would have to be faster surely.

I might add another drive though as a dedicated backup and keep using my current drives as a concoction of both OS and my data storage.

RAID 0: Hype or blessing? | RAID 0: Hype or blessing? | Tweakers.net

What about this one guys

Intel X25-M 80GB SSD Solid State Drive New & Retail Box - eBay Hard Drives, Drives, Components, Computers. (end time 03-Jun-10 16:04:53 AEST)

This is a review of it
Review: Intel X25-M 80GB SSD â€” PaulStamatiou.com

Brink · 01 Jun 2010

Billy,

Having HHDs connected through a PCI-E x32 would indeed be fast, but still not as fast as a SSD connected to it. A SSD would be just as fast connected to a SATA port since neither drives could reach the full bandwith of SATA II or the new SATA III yet though. It's up to you though on what you would like and what fits your needs though.

You could get the Intel drive cheaper here:
Newegg.com - Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2R5 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

However, if you do not need a lot of space, you could get the 50GB OCZ drive below for a bit cheaper. Plus, it is much faster and supports TRIM in RAID when connected to a Intel SATA port with the latest Intel RAID 9.6.0.1014 driver version installed.

Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX50G 2.5" 50GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Hope this helps some.

gregrocker · 01 Jun 2010

Brink, maybe I should PM you, but since it's on-topic I have a RAID issue that came up on a clean reinstall of Vista I did for a friend in Florida: When I show up I discover it is a 360x2 RAID array on this Dell desktop with less than 100gb install.

I was under time pressure so didn't want to research un-RAIDING it, even though his external was full and it would have been nice to have the second HD for his image and other needed backups.

The reinstall went great and he is still raving about how fast reinstalled Vista is running. I mumbled a little about how he might want to consider later un-RAIDING to use the second HD for storage, especially because losing one HD in a RAID array can lose his system.

He asked me later if the fast performance is owing any to the RAID and I didn't know how to answer. What do you think?

Thanks!

Brink · 01 Jun 2010

Hello Greg,

Having HDDs in a RAID 0 would be faster than a single HDD, but not as fast as a SSD (new generations) to a point. Plus with RAID, you do have that chance of losing data if using a RAID 0 instead of mirroring the RAID.

It really depends on the sequential and random (mostly) read and write speads of the drives and what their bandwidth limit is. Almost always a SSD will be faster. If you wanted to RAID a SSD, then it will need to be a newer SSD like the ones above connected to a Intel SATA port with the latest Intel RAID drivers as described above with Windows 7 to have TRIM support while using RAID.

The best way to tell is to run a HDD benchmarking program like CrystalDiskMark on the drives in RAID and not to see the difference.

billybowden · 01 Jun 2010

It would be nice if they made 3.5" versions so you don't have to buy conversion cages

Brink · 01 Jun 2010

Some like the OCZ one above come with a 2.5 to 3.5 bracket that you can use to mount it in a 3.5 slot.

billybowden · 02 Jun 2010

I ended up getting:
OCZ Vertex 64GB SSD 2.5" Solid State Drive RAID Support - eBay Hard Drives, Drives, Components, Computers. (end time 19-Jun-10 20:50:28 AEST)
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....d=175858550025

pparks1 · 02 Jun 2010

Good choice Billy...going with the SSD.

Everybody focuses so much on the throughput of the drives when they are RAIDed together when they talk about performance and they compare that to the throughput speeds of the SSD. However, one of the best features of the SSD is it's incredibly low access time. This is where these drives really shine and provide their performance. A RAID of mechanical SATA drives simply cannot match this.