Samsung 840 Pro's in RAID 0

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wyssin

Junior Member
Jul 3, 2012
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Is Samsung's Magician software necessary to be able to use the Samsung 840 Pro SSDs?
What functionality exactly does the Magician software provide?

I want to set up two 840 Pro drives in RAID 0, along the lines described in Anand's article from August 2012, only using 840s instead of the 830s used in the article.

On the website I see Magician software (version 3.2 or 4.0) and Data Migration Tool (version 1.0 or 1.1), as well as a driver. I don't see any manuals online or clear descriptions of what the Magician functions are.

The Samsung website also warns that after Magician is engaged the SSD will not be recognized if it is part of a RAID array, which would seem to be a reason to NOT want to install the software in my situation.
 
Baked

Baked

Lifer
Dec 28, 2004
36,052
17
81
What motherboard are you using? I setup my RAID 0 using the mobo's integrated bios software.
 
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Lifted

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2004
5,748
2
0
I have 2 840's (non-pro) in RAID 0 and Magician does not detect them. Instead it detects an Intel array without any knowledge of it consisting of 2 Samsung SSD's. All other SSD utilities see them though. Forget about Magician. What did you want to use it for anyway?
 
Unit'Igor

Unit'Igor

Member
Feb 21, 2013
27
0
0
Yes Magician cant see drive in raid field,stupid DECISION FROM SAMSUNG.
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Intel i7 3770K - ASUS P8Z77 V-DELUXE - Patriot Viper Extreme 2 x 4Gb 2133 - 2 x Samsung 840 PRO 128Gb Raid0 - Gigabyte HD7850 OC 2GB - Windows 7 64 bit
 
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Engineer

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
Unit'Igor said:
Yes Magician cant see raid,stupid.

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Intel i7 3770K - ASUS P8Z77 V-DELUXE - Patriot Viper Extreme 2 x 4Gb 2133 - 2 x Samsung 840 PRO 128Gb Raid0 - Gigabyte HD7850 OC 2GB - Windows 7 64 bit
Click to expand...

Are you calling the Magician software "stupid" or the OP?

I'll hold off on any other commentary until I see an explanation.
 
E

Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
has anyone seen those new OP 840 pro's called the SM843 - they have drive light activity
 
W

wyssin

Junior Member
Jul 3, 2012
9
0
0
Lifted said:
I have 2 840's (non-pro) in RAID 0 and Magician does not detect them. Instead it detects an Intel array without any knowledge of it consisting of 2 Samsung SSD's. All other SSD utilities see them though. Forget about Magician. What did you want to use it for anyway?
Click to expand...

Well, I don't know whether I need Magician at all. That's part of my question. Samsung hasn't provided clear info on exactly what all Magician does so that I can make the decision easily. I haven't found any separate manual or guide for download on the website explaining what Magician does. On the CD included with the SSD, there are .exe files, which I have to assume will load/runMagician. Maybe there are help files or manuals that become available from within Magician, but that's a catch-22 -- you have to load the program to be able to see what the program does.

From what I gather reading other forums, Magician is necessary to be able to load firmware updates, which is something I DO want to be able to do though.

I have access to another computer that's running in AHCI. Should I plug the SSDs into that computer in AHCI, run Magician, install the new firmware, then put the SSDs back into my computer and run them in RAID?
 
W

wyssin

Junior Member
Jul 3, 2012
9
0
0
Unit'Igor said:
I called Samsung decision that making raid invisible in Magician stupid thing to do.I thought it was obvious.
This is something that i wrote about two months ago.
third reply from the bottom of the page,reply from Igor Novak


Edit your original post so as not to be misunderstood further.

Thanks,

Burner27 - Moderator
Memory & Storage
Click to expand...

That article helps! It looks like just about everything that Magician does can be done through other means. The main question I have is how to update the firmware without using Magician.
 
E

Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
Watch out for all these LSI on motherboard - samsung 840 and 840 pro's are unsupported by LSI. They have removed them from their list and refuse to support them for 92xx controllers. They are however supported by the 3ware which is the same exact controller (hardware identical) with AV/mac pro/uefi support.

lame. Confirmed by many on webhostingtalk and lowendtalk - the only lsi help you will get is to buy the SM843 enterprise drives which are just 840 pro's with more OP and drive light activity and have less cache (!!) and write slower.

So far i've have one 840 pro drop after a week of service, popped it into a pc and it was 100% new and showed no smart errors in magician. Heavy load from ESXi - the replacement rebuilt and has not blipped ever since. Probably shitty firmware as LSI is the king of krappy firmware and drivers imo.

Probably why HP ditched them for PMC-Adaptec.
 
Batmeat

Batmeat

Senior member
Feb 1, 2011
803
45
91
I'd like to back this thread up a bit and ask the OP why you need raid 0?

I had two gen 2 corsair ssd's in raid 0 Benchmarking about 400mb read/write and couldn't tell a difference between my vertex 3 (550mb read/write) and my vertex 4 (500mb read/write). What is it you're trying to load and run that needs to be so fast? Honestly, I don't have an 840 pro (yet) but I imagine simply running from a single drive would be fast enough. However, if you simply want raid 0 because you can... Then I understand. I'm the same way. I demand high performance.
 
maxcellerate

maxcellerate

Junior Member
Mar 16, 2013
22
0
0
I installed magician as it's supposed to 'optimise windows' which I thought might be useful as my clean install has taken 120gb for itself, but like others here I've found that magician can't recognise the raided drives.
Looks like I'm going to have to 'optimise' windows the hard way...
 
S

Socio

Golden Member
May 19, 2002
1,732
2
81
Perhaps it can only see and optimize a drive if AHCI is enabled and going to a raid disables it?

I have my OS on a 840 pro and use the magician software to optimize the drive and OS, it also has a nice benchmark program and a temp file cleaner I find handy.
 
maxcellerate

maxcellerate

Junior Member
Mar 16, 2013
22
0
0
Socio said:
Perhaps it can only see and optimize a drive if AHCI is enabled and going to a raid disables it?
Click to expand...

Something like that, certainly no AHCI for raided drives.

As to the RAID itself, maybe it's to early to say as I haven't run apps seriously yet but it is taking 3.5mins (yes that's THREE AND A HALF MINUTES) to start window 7.

This isn't as bad as it sounds as it's pretty quick once your in there's a surprising amount of other stuff you can get done in 3.5 mins :)
 
aigomorla

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
21,044
3,524
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dont R0 unless u need the space.

Too many things are lost when you R0, like Trim, for speed you wont notice.

Now if u R0 to double your storage space... well, i have no comment about that.


But doing R0 for speed on a SSD, well... under most normal conditions u wont notice jack.

Unit'Igor said:
Yes Magician cant see drive in raid field,stupid DECISION FROM SAMSUNG.
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Click to expand...

Its not samsung's fault.

If you guys dont know what Raid exactly is and what it does with SSD's.. DONT RAID.

What happens is the ICH takes both SSD's and converts it into a logical drive.
Then the logical drive is mounted as a physical drive in bios.
This mount causes TRIM, and other SSD functions to NOT work, because the software would need to pass the code down though the ICH, which the ICH wont do.
And Trim on R0's on the new intel Z87 chipset has shown more problems then gains....

Sure u can see u have 2 SSD's, however u cant access them, you cant do anything, because they are locked in the logical drive config.
 
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Z

Z15CAM

Platinum Member
Nov 20, 2010
2,184
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www.flickr.com
You can mount a SSD's on Intel SATA 3 Controller either in AHCI or RAID Mode as Set in BIOS. In a RAID Mode SSD Mount where you have HDD's in RAID Array and the SSD is NOT a Member, Samsung's Magician software will NOT recognize the SSD. Samsung's Software only responds to AHCI Mounting of their SSD's. Note that TRIM is functional on SSD's mounted in RAID Mode as long as the SSD is NOT a Member of an Array.

To check that TRIM is functioning when the SSD is mounted in RAID Mode on the Intel SATA 3 Controller, you must install the latest Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) RAID Driver for the TRIM Check Tool to recognize the SSD.

It would be interesting if TRIM does work when SSD's are Members of a RAID Array by using the TRIM Check Tool but as aigomorla points out SSD's in RAID Array loose TRIM Function.

TRIM Check Tool can be found here: http://files.thecybershadow.net/trimcheck/
 
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aigomorla

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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Z15CAM said:
It would be interesting if TRIM does work when SSD's are Members of a RAID Array by using the TRIM Check Tool but as aigomorla points out SSD's in RAID Array loose TRIM Function.

TRIM Check Tool can be found here: http://files.thecybershadow.net/trimcheck/
Click to expand...

Z87 Chipset.
http://www.eteknix.com/intel-haswell-z87-chipset-detailed/

Another nice addition is TRIM support in RAID 0 storage configurations along with Rapid Storage Technology 12 and RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 capabilities.
Click to expand...
 
Fernando 1

Fernando 1

Senior member
Jul 29, 2012
351
9
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Z15CAM said:
Note that TRIM is functional on SSD's mounted in RAID Mode as long as the SSD is NOT a Member of an Array.
Click to expand...
You are wrong. The TRIM command passes the Intel 7-Series and 8-Series SATA RAID Controllers into any Intel RAID0 array, if the BIOS contains an Intel RAID ROM resp. Intel EFI RAID module v11.x.x.xxxx or higher and an Intel RAID driver v11.x.x.xxxx or higher is running. TRIM in RAID0 works even with older Intel Chipsets from 4-Series up, if the BIOS contains an especially modified Intel RAID ROM/SataDriver (look >here<).
To check that TRIM is functioning when the SSD is mounted in RAID Mode on the Intel SATA 3 Controller, you must install the latest Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) RAID Driver for the TRIM Check Tool to recognize the SSD.
Click to expand...
The detection of the SSD by the TRIM Check Tool has nothing to do with the version of the in-use Intel RAID driver.
It would be interesting if TRIM does work when SSD's are Members of a RAID Array by using the TRIM Check Tool but as aigomorla points out SSD's in RAID Array loose TRIM Function.
Click to expand...
TRIM is working fine with SSDs, which are members of a RAID0 array. For details you may look >here< and >here<.
 
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