RAID Card Question

hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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If I was to use a simple raid card such as an areca 1200 card and do a pass through disk for an ssd would that use ahci or ide mode? I wanted to be able to get trim and smart support with a pass through but I can seem to find any information on that?
 

ViviTheMage

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I have never tried, but this is about all I can find :

The problem is that for some reason (unknown to me or EVGA Tech Support) AHCI and my Areca Raid card do not play nice together. So I am forced to run IDE only.

No idea if that is related to that specific mobo he was using, or the Areca raid card.
 

hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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Damn I was afraid so. Do you know of any other raid cards that might be better with that offhand?
 

groberts101

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Mar 17, 2011
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you don't set sata mode settings like you would with a single sata based drive when using a ariad card. Simply plug the card in.. extract the drivers to USB or disk.. and press F6 during the OS install. That will insert the necessary scsi drivers(which usually emulate the AHCI mode required for best performance).

The card chosen will have all of this in the instructions. Pretty simple stuff once you read/run through it.

PS. AFAIK.. no trim pass-through yet for riadcard drivers. They have been working on it though for quite some time and maybe intels new trim-capable raid drivers will help push the effort a bit faster. Good luck with it all.
 

hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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Hmm I might have to just try it. The reason i wanted to use the card because the onboard controller is a pos. So i wanted to do a pass through disk because I didn't need the raid part so I was unsure if passthrough did ide or ahci which Ill have to find out.
 

groberts101

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just keep in mind that connecting to a PCI-E port is different than connecting to a sata port. It's all in the drivers used for the card with Areca being among the best out there.

Forget about sata modes completely(it's irrelevant to that card) as the mfgr will use any emulation necessary to achieve the desired results.
 

hennessy1

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Do you think that would negativly impact the ssd performance its an intel 320 series.
 

groberts101

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also keep in mind that the card mentioned is only PCI-E x1 speed.. so for raiding SSD's it will not be the fastest solution. Should be nearly capable enough for a couple if smaller/slower SSD's though... Such as the 320's mentioned.
 

Railgun

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Mar 27, 2010
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What's wrong with the onboard? If it's a single disk, and being a 1200, not 6G, I don't know that you'd get that much more performance, unless the onboard is SATA I.

What's the drive?
 

hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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It is a evga 780i board. Even on another 780i with a single 600gb intel ssd i have on another computer the performance and slow responsiveness is horrible. I plan on using the 160gb 320 series ssd on this particular computer we are talking about. That chipset does not have ahci either and I end up having to use the ms driver if I want it.
 

hennessy1

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I So just to make sure were on the same track regaurdless of the raid card its the drivers that will make or break the ahci component? Because I feel comfortable using the areca card ive used them in the past and they havent failed me yet.
 

groberts101

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the drivers will affect performance levels and offer features in the same way that AHCI mode will for a single sata drive running off the onboard chip. NCQ.. TCQ.. probably hotplugging too.. etc.

Areca is considered to be very good in that respect and you should be fine.
 

hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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Ok good to know. Thank you all for your help. I actually bumped the card up to an ARC-1210 card. Just because of the pcie 1x limitation it would have on even a single ssd. Other then that I will just run the optical drive off the 780i chipset and have moved everything to add-on cards. I had a spare intel nic so I can disable the rest of the onboard stuff. Other then that the cpu horsepower is plenty for the apps that are running on it.
 

groberts101

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should be a worthwhile upgrade and allow you to squeeze another year or two out of that system, to say the least. Good luck with it all.

PS.. before I forget.. check to be sure that the PCI-E revision on that board is 2.0 since the older 1.0 revision will squash the potential bandwidth gained. The reason I mention it is that I've seen many P'd off NVidia users running cards at half the expected speeds. Also be aware that some slots will be rated differently than others so be sure to know where the limitations lye before hooking it up.
 
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hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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Ya I've got a q9650 in there with some 8gb of ddr2 1066 ram. I had thought that all the 780i boards were pcie 2.0. Just run gpu-z correct to test?
 
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groberts101

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not too sure and is why I mentioned to check it out more. I'd first go to the mobo mfgrs site to check spec's and then look through the manual to refine the search if that shows too little info.

I just know that there have been quite a few NVidia board users who posted of either having no revison 2.0 spec.. or had to swap the card to another slot to get away from a throttled 1.0 spec on a particular slot. Was just trying to save you some headaches after the fact, is all. Good luck on the info hunt.
 

hennessy1

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That was close but i did look in the manual and several review sites and used gpu z and confirmed they are running at 2.0. Thank you for that I wouldve been irritated if they werent after all the work I did to get this project going. Thank you again.
 

groberts101

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no problem. I love's me some raid and am usually happy to share the little I've learned over the years of testing.. and returning.. various cards. lol

Good luck with it all and post some screenies when you're up and running if you get a chance. The chip on that card should be more than capable.
 

aigomorla

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pm rubycon..

im sure she figured out a way around this with an areca..
 

hennessy1

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Mar 18, 2007
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Will do thank you. I did find out the middle x16 slot runs at pcie 1.0 the first and third run at 2.0. So ill just put the raid card in the third slot and the nic in the 2nd pcie x16 slot 1.0 spec should prove to be sufficent for the use.