Hdd raid + ssd trim

[Elcs]

Well... I have 3 HDD's and 2 SSD's on my Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P-B3's Intel SATA controller.

The SSD's are a 240Gb Crucial M5500 drive which I use for my OS/Programs mainly and a 120Gb OCZ Vertex 3 which is used for games. These are on the 6GB/s ports of the controller.

My HDD's include a 2Tb Western Digital Green drive which I use for storage and 2 x 500Gb Western Digital Green drives which are currently empty. These drives occupy 3 of my 3Gb/s ports of the Intel controller.

Before recent events, I had my OCZ SSD on the Marvell Controller set to AHCI and my HDD's on the Intel 3Gb/s ports set to RAID, with the 2 x 500Gb drives in a RAID 0 situation. Whilst RAID 0'ing two slow drives together doesn't light the world on fire, it did provide a tangible loading speed boost to any games that I couldn't squeeze onto my SSD.

Now that the pre-amble is over, I'd like to reestablish my 2 x 500Gb RAID 0 array on the Intel controller. However I am concerned that if I switch the controller to a RAID setting, I could lose the ability for my SSD's to TRIM and over time that would likely prove to be not very fun.

So the question is... Can I enable RAID on my Intel controller, RAID 0 my 2 x 500Gb HDD's and keep my SSD's doing the TRIM thing, all at the same time?

If so, is there anything special I need to do? If not, okay 🙁

Any further information or clarification required, post and I'll respond as soon as I can.

 

[Elixer]

I was reading that you can over provision the free space of the SSD, (like, if it was a 256GB, you would only use 196GB, and leave the rest alone) and that should help situations where trim isn't available.

However, even doing that, you have to be careful not to fill up the SSD past 85% (I think it was) or you will get major slowdowns.

I believe I read that form Xtreme forums.. but not sure.

Maybe someone else with actual experience with your situation can be of more help...

 

[Elcs]

Thanks for your post, Elixer 🙂

Anyone else able to shed some light on this?

I could actually just hook up my 2 x 500Gb drives to my Marvell Controller and use that to RAID0 them up but that will involve a bit of case opening and graphics card removal, as well as using the less than favourable Marvell controller,.

 

[hhhd1]

If the SSDs are connected in RAID mode (set in the bios setup), but, the SSDs are not actually in a RAID array, and accessed individually, and recognized by windows as idividual drives .. I think you have nothing to worry about.

The only problem is if the SSDs are in a RAID array.