indilinx -- Trim -- RAID/AHCI question

[Cr0nJ0b]

Hey guys,

I'm thinking of getting an SSD pretty soon, and with all my investigation I'm seeing a lot of people talk about setting the drive up with AHCI. I'm guessing that's the BIOS setting i see in my main screen...

My question is this...

With my motherboard, P5Q-E, I have the option to setup RAID, ACHI or one other for the 6 SATA connectors on the intel chipset. I have 4 drives in a RAID 5 configuration as my data set, so I'm forced to use the RAID option. so....does that mean that I can't setup my SSD with AHCI? will it not trim correctly?

thanks

 

[EarthwormJim]

Unfortunately you can't specify the setting for individual drives (something I miss from my nforce board) with the Intel ICH10r.

Hopefully Intel comes with an update or something that allows trim commands to be passed through RAID.

 

[ChrisAttebery]

From wikipedia:

"Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI)"

Does this mean that TRIM would work in RAID mode too?

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

I'm still wondering this. I have the cash, but I need to understand what this means.

If I get an SSD and set it as the first drive in non-raid mode, will it be AHCI? and will it then support TRIM?

If not, then I would guess that I can only use wiper of something like that for fixing my drive right/

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: ChrisAttebery
From wikipedia:

"Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI)"

Does this mean that TRIM would work in RAID mode too?

It enables some of the features of AHCI, 3gbps bandwidth, native command queuing, but the Intel Raid drivers are not passing Trim commands; so it really doesn't matter if it's AHCI or not.

There's always the garbage collecting firmwares for RAID setups until Intel gets Trim sorted out.

 

[taltamir]

RAID on an intel mobo = RAID + AHCI
IDE = Legacy commands (no idea why they call it IDE, as it has nothing to do with the term IDE)
AHCI = Allow modern features, like TRIM.

For SSD you want AHCI mode. but if you set it to RAID mode it will load intel drivers instead of microsoft drivers, and the intel driver does not pass trim command YET. Intel said it will release a version that does ASAP.

 

[davem1979]

I would like to use a single Intel X25M 160gb alongside two 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 on the ICH10r on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard.

From what I've read above, I understand that in order to use any 2 hard drives in RAID on the 6 SATA ports of the ICH10r, I will need to set the ICH10r to RAID mode and therefore will not have the ability for the TRIM command to be passed through to a non-member RAID Intel SSD drive.

I'm assuming then if I want TRIM support using a single SSD with two normal hard drives in a raid array, I will have to use AHCI mode on the ICH10r and buy a separate RAID card for the normal hard drives I wish to RAID.

Is my understanding correct?

Many Thanks!

 

[PUN]

I would like to use a single Intel X25M 160gb alongside two 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 on the ICH10r on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard.

From what I've read above, I understand that in order to use any 2 hard drives in RAID on the 6 SATA ports of the ICH10r, I will need to set the ICH10r to RAID mode and therefore will not have the ability for the TRIM command to be passed through to a non-member RAID Intel SSD drive.

I'm assuming then if I want TRIM support using a single SSD with two normal hard drives in a raid array, I will have to use AHCI mode on the ICH10r and buy a separate RAID card for the normal hard drives I wish to RAID.

Is my understanding correct?

Many Thanks!

Yes that is correct.
I have a Jmicron Raid controller aside from my ICH10R so I'll be setting up my 2TB RAID on it.

 

[davem1979]

Thanks Pun,

And, with the new RAID drivers and firmware that Intel will be releasing soon for the X25-M, do you happen to know if those drivers will allow through their Toolbox software to manually TRIM the X25-M if it is a non-raid member of the ICH10r.

As well, the Gigabyte EX58-UD5 does have a Jmicron RAID controller as well, so I could just use that. However, I've read that the ICH10R is a better RAID controller. Whether there is a major real-world difference between the two, I don't know.

Thanks!

 

[TemjinGold]

Just out of curiosity, since you will be using the SSD as a performance drive and I'm guessing the 7200 rpm drives as storage, why not just break the RAID 0 and run normal AHCI? Then you wouldn't have any problems with anything (not to mention you'd have increased reliability from not running RAID 0).

 

[davem1979]

Thanks Temjin,

I could do that, and that would definitely solve the problem I just want to understand what is possible and what is not possible.

I was thinking of using RAID 0 in the situation of converting/opening in saving pics and video.

Since the Intel X25-M can read up to 250Mb/s and a RAID 0 on 7200rpm short stroked can read and write close to 200Mb/s, the cost of the extra 7200rpm disk to make the raid to not create a bottleneck in reading from the X25-M and writing to the RAID 0 might be worth $60...Probably though, in the end, it's not going to make a big difference in my situation in which I'm not doing gigabytes per day. Also for storage of hundreds of 10mb photos, would the RAID 0 help in making the thumbnails and images load faster, like if i do a batch open of 30 JPG's in Photoshop CS3. On my machine now (Q6600+4GB Ram) with a single short stroked 640gb hard disk, I have to wait over a minute. Do you think the hard drive or the CPU is the bottleneck in this situation?

 

[PUN]

Thanks Temjin,

I could do that, and that would definitely solve the problem I just want to understand what is possible and what is not possible.

I was thinking of using RAID 0 in the situation of converting/opening in saving pics and video.

Since the Intel X25-M can read up to 250Mb/s and a RAID 0 on 7200rpm short stroked can read and write close to 200Mb/s, the cost of the extra 7200rpm disk to make the raid to not create a bottleneck in reading from the X25-M and writing to the RAID 0 might be worth $60...Probably though, in the end, it's not going to make a big difference in my situation in which I'm not doing gigabytes per day. Also for storage of hundreds of 10mb photos, would the RAID 0 help in making the thumbnails and images load faster, like if i do a batch open of 30 JPG's in Photoshop CS3. On my machine now (Q6600+4GB Ram) with a single short stroked 640gb hard disk, I have to wait over a minute. Do you think the hard drive or the CPU is the bottleneck in this situation?

From what I heard, Intel should be releasing a firmware to use SSD + 7200rpm under RAID with TRIM support...who knows when. I would RAID0 them under jmicron since you'll get a nice increase in write speed. Copying movies/pic/etc would be much faster and it would serve as a better storage drive (assuming ext backup and considering the risk of drive failure)

I am running:
SSD (primary) ICH10R
2x RAID0 1TB WD Black (storage) Jmicron
750GB Ext WD HD (Backup)
spare 500 WD Black

 

[davem1979]

From what I heard, Intel should be releasing a firmware to use SSD + 7200rpm under RAID with TRIM support...who knows when. I would RAID0 them under jmicron since you'll get a nice increase in write speed. Copying movies/pic/etc would be much faster and it would serve as a better storage drive (assuming ext backup and considering the risk of drive failure)

I am running:
SSD (primary) ICH10R
2x RAID0 1TB WD Black (storage) Jmicron
750GB Ext WD HD (Backup)
spare 500 WD Black

Hi Pun,

Thanks! That's a nice setup. I am looking at setting up:

1. Intel X25M 160GB OS/APPS/VMs/files currently working on
2. 2x RAID0 640GB WD Black short stroked to 320GB RAID 0 + partition 480GB RAID 1 (RAID 0 for fast storage of documents, video, photos and RAID 1 for internal back up of SSD's and RAID 0 partition)
3. 500GB external USB/eSata backup of everything

I have my music/movies on a separate HTPC. This storage setup I think will do well for fast document access and photo/editing/converting etc....

 

[SolMiester]

Allegedly, as RAID 1 has the data in 2 place the controller should be able to read quicker. RAID 0 is quicker at writing as the data is halfed and writing across the disks. It you want fast read, I would of though Raid 1 would be better suited and give you fault tolerance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_1#RAID_1_performance