SSD and Conventional HD in RAID?

[doctordoctor]

Background caveats and information:

1. This is the third system I've built and I still don't really know what I'm doing. I have never used RAID.

2. I purchased these parts as a general upgrade and primarily because I intend to do some heavy duty HD video editing work.

3. More or less relevant specs are as follows (admittedly, these may not be "well matched" choices creating some bottlenecks within the system but that is what happens when you're thin on knowledge):

ASUS M4A87TD EVO AM3
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
iomega Professional 1TB USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive 34280
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB

4. I have [thread=2113199]read and understand[/thread] (here and elsewhere) the issues concerning the need to enable AHCI within the BIOS for the SSD drive prior to installing Windows 7 to ensure that the appropriate AHCI drivers are installed.

5. However, everything I have read has indicated that selecting RAID within the MB BIOS essentially contains the identical AHCI commands with the additional function of "turning RAID on," whether RAID is used or not.

So . . .

1. Does it make any sense to select RAID for the SSD and Samsung drives even if I have no current plans to use them in RAID?
2. Is there any useful way to use these two drives in RAID without additional drives?

As usual, these forums have been an extremely useful source of information. Thanks to all.

 

[velvetpants]

It will make no difference weather you select AHCI or RAID, other then boot time will be a few seconds longer since it will have to go through the raid controller info screen during boot if you select raid. During that screen you can enter a menu to create a raid array, but if you don't it will work just the same as AHCI.

Don't think you can RAID drives of different sizes together, probably not a good idea to raid an SSD and a mechanical drive either way.

I'd just leave it a AHCI and use the SSD for the os and 1TB for storage. If you want some faster storage you could benefit from getting a second Samsung F3 and putting those two in RAID0. It would work like a really fast 2TB drive.