Intel Z68 SRT with separate system disk

[pschweig]

Hi

I am planning a new build with Intel Core i7 and Z68 chipset.

My plan is to have an SSD for system disk and a 1TB HDD with 20GB SSD acting as cache for it.

I read that you need to set the SATA mode to RAID in the BIOS in order for SRT to function. Will I be able to configure my disks as above or will all disks appear as one raid volume when SATA mode is set to RAID?

I'm hoping that I will be able to configure which disks feature in the SRT volume and which operate independently.

thanks
Paul

 

[Jhatfie]

This is my plan as well, just waiting to get a good 120+ GB SSD to act as a boot drive. I am currently using my Crucial M4 as cache to my 1TB Samsung and it works very well. I believe that the method you mentioned is correct, of course I have not done it yet so I cannot validate though.

 

[bankster55]

Using an SSD as system boot drive is ass backwards
The idea of SRT is to put O/S on a big normal HDD and use a little SSD as a caching drive, thereby giving best of both worlds. Cheap big drive and fast inexpensive tiny cache drive to speed things up on the big O/S drive. If theres no O/S on big normal drive - whats the use?

And you have be to in RAID MODE in bios, but dont need to setup RAID. SRT using Intel SRT sw is a kind of non traditional RAID.

http://www.futurelooks.com/video-fu...us-some-tips-and-tricks-for-successful-setup/

 

[john3850]

Many people here do use the SSD as a system boot drive.
I have read too many posts by people here stating you will get better performance by using the ssd system drive on a Z68.

 

[BrianTho2010]

OP, thanks for posting this question and thanks to Jhatfie for answering it.

I have a 120GB SSD as my boot drive and a 2TB black edition as my data a drive but was wondering if I could add a 60GB SSD to the 2TB drive to speed it up. Glad to know I can do that with SRT.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

OP, thanks for posting this question and thanks to Jhatfie for answering it.

I have a 120GB SSD as my boot drive and a 2TB black edition as my data a drive but was wondering if I could add a 60GB SSD to the 2TB drive to speed it up. Glad to know I can do that with SRT.

Yes, as you found out -- and consider that any controller set up to create a RAID volume will admit single HDDs as separate volumes, just as you have in AHCI mode.

For John 3850 -- yeah -- you compromise the full-throttle performance of the SSD, but in the right configuration, the "accelerated" HDD performance asymptotically approaches about 80% of the standalone SSD's. Other benchmarks showa by comparison "as much as" a 400% improvement over HDD standalone performance. There are other threads here in which we threw in our benchmark results among a few contributors.

 

[john3850]

Thanks Bonzai
I type to slow to give the correct infomation fast enough when needed.
English is my natural language and for the last 25 years I could never find the time to type do to my jobs late hours so bare with me.
Now I am retired and can type again.
I was typing better in win 3.1 do to dos and batch files editing.

 

[pschweig]

thanks for the replies everybody

Just waiting for the kit to arrive now

 

[iTwins]

2 weeks using Intel SRT, I now feel it really isn't all that cracked up to be.

I gave up my 5x1TB RAID0 for a 1x1TB + SSD SRT and I now regret this configuration decision. I should have kept my RAID0 and use in addition to SSD SRT. That is if your SSD cache is all full, you still have RAID0 to back you up. When the SSD cache is full, your HDD performance is back to normal speed exactly like a single 1TB without SSD caching. That means SLOW! I had to reset the acceleration mode everytime the HDD + SSD cache combination becomes slow.

I now plan to buy another 60GB SSD and in addition to the 60GB I already have, make them into 2x60GB SSD RAID0. Reserve 100GB of the SSD to OS and frequently use apps and allocate 20GB to SSD caching for the 5x1TB RAID0 for less "urgent" apps or media files.

Keep in mind, Intel ICH only allows two RAID arrays and RST already occupies one. If you have more than 3TB and using it as Windows boot drive, you can only use up to 2TB. You can use all of 3TB if you only use it for storage. I didn't know this until I bought the SSD and hope to cache the whole 5x1TB RAID0 array.