Best Way to Setup SSD Raid 0?

RyDawg0014 · 03 Mar 2011

hey everyone! i searched but couldnt find the answer to what i was looking for.

currently i am running a raid right now with my 2 old 500gb HDDs (friend set it up on my computer before). i have 2 new 128gb SSDs sitting here that i would like to setup to raid and replace my win7 onto that (clean install) .

i wanted to know what would be the best way to set them up with raid and do a fresh install of win7 on them.

should i set them up as a striped voloume as a dynamic disk or is that wrong to install win7 on? also i know trim probably isnt supported for raid 0 ssd but what would be the best way to keep them healthy.

any help is much appreciated, thank you

Wishmaster · 04 Mar 2011

RyDawg0014 said:

what would be the best way to keep them healthy.

any help is much appreciated, thank you

Just run it as a single drive, and let it take care of itself would be my suggestion.

Even a single SSD will be leaps and bounds faster in every way, VS a Spinning drives in Raid0. And, a lot less headache.

If you have a Intel Chipset, just download the F6 install drivers from the official site, and save to a USB drive just in case.
Then, set your Bios to RAID/AHCI mode and set up the RAID.

pparks1 · 04 Mar 2011

I would just run 2 drives, both as singles. Screwing around with RAID0 is often just begging for problems.

seth500 · 04 Mar 2011

I agree 100% use them as singles as I have already done hardware raid 0 and found that your trim is not supported and the ssd's are not reconized by the hardware manufactuer's software. For instance my intel ssd tool box won't work because it doesn't reconize the hardware controller and therefore doesn't see it's drives as thiers. Next you have the problem that you will see no noticable difference in speed gain as a matter of fact it may be reduced as I saw in mine. I went threw google like crazy and found nothing but issuses with hardware raids. Now a software raid may be different because windows 7 might be able to support trim on that and again I say "MIGHT" I don't know for sure, but your best all around performance will be leave them single much better all the way around...I have been down that road already and it ain't worth it trying the raid thing...

hope this helps

Regards Seth

DeaconFrost · 04 Mar 2011

RAID0 with HDDs is a dead technology, as reality finally overcame the hype a few years ago. As for SSDs, I see people saying it is useless and others saying to go for it.

What I'm confused about is your question. I don't know what you mean by the best way to set up RAID0. There should only be one way of setting up a true array, and that's configuring it on the controller before you ever get to the OS install. If you are configuring it in Windows, aka software RAID, don't even bother. Never let software do the job of hardware.