Making do without TRIM

[rimscrimley]

Hi folks,
I spotted a fantastic deal on the Vertex 3 a couple weeks ago and picked a second one up with the plan to create a RAID-0 array.

I then discovered my Z68 chipset is not supported for TRIM in RAID.

Now I have to decide between using the new drive as planned or just using it as a cache on my storage drive. Any ideas?

Secondly, I've never set up a RAID-0 array before, let alone on my C drive. Is there any way to set it up and simply restore a system image to the new array? If you could point me to instructions, I'd certainly appreciate it. Thanks!

 

[Coup27]

Setting up a RAID0 array is quite easy but IMO pretty pointless. I ran 2x 128GB 830's for a month in RAID0 and I could not notice any speed improvement over a single drive. I thought this would be the case prior to doing it but thought I would try it anyway.

The reason is the biggest advances an SSD offers is access time, latency and random reading. These 3 combined are the main reasons why an SSD makes your system feel so fast. If you understand these 3, you will understand why RAID'ing multiple SSD's do not actually improve these substantially beyond one SSD.

Anyway, to try it for yourself:

1) Secure erase your used Vertex.

2) Connect them each to the 6Gbps SATA ports.

3) In your UEFI/BIOS, set the SATA controller to RAID and OptionROM to Force BIOS.

4) After POST, press Ctrl+I to open the Intel Rapid Storage Technology interface.

5) From there it should be straight forward on how to make a RAID array. Make your RAID0 and exit.

6) Install Windows. If you want you can download the latest Intel RST F6 driver and load it at the partition table editor.

7) After Windows is installed, install the latest Intel chipset and Intel RST installer package. I found that speeds were much higher when the RST package was installer instead of just the F6 driver.

 

[rimscrimley]

Thanks! Is there any way to install Windows from a system image/backup, or do I need to install Windows from disc first? I actually don't have an optical drive on this machine, so it would be huge if I could restore the image without the Win7 disc.

 

[Coup27]

AFAIK you will be able to restore your image onto your new RAID. If it doesn't work then you'll have to install fresh anyway so you haven't lost anything.

 

[JBT]

On my system I CANNOT switch between ACHI and RAID with out blue screening the OS on boot. So I doubt your OS install will work if you change it to RAID.

You'll probably have to re install the OS.

 

[Zargon]

Ive done it, there are faq's online

but its not like installing windows is that time consuming these days