Which Card for RAID 0 with SSD

[TheWhoDat]

I have a Asus P6X58D MB with the Marvell Sata III controller, which I have read is terrible.

I currently have a 256GB SSD (Samsung 830)

I am running out of space for my games (SWTOR is 20GB by itself)

I am going to get another Samsung 830 and want to RAID 0 it with the current drive.

Which PCIe card (SATA III 6GB/s) will provide the best Speed and Reliability. I was wanting a REAL Raid card, not the "fake RAID" cards I have been reading about. I really do not want to upgrade my MB, just want to put a RAID controller card in right now.

I am running Window7 64bit.

And help or suggestions will be much appreciated!

Thank you

 

[Old Hippie]

Probably an LSI 9260-4i + FastPath software key.

I purchased my new card from Ebay for 255.00 and my key is an open box item from Tech for Less cost 120.00.

 

[sub.mesa]

Remember that you will lose TRIM command on hardware RAID0. In the near future, Intel should release a driver that allows Windows 7 + SSD + RAID0 + TRIM combination, by letting the RAID array emulate an AHCI controller instead of regular SCSI-interface which is always used as RAID interface under Windows OS.

Host-based RAID is better than hardware RAID; which often have higher latencies and lower IOps rate.

Probably using your REAL controller, the Intel 3Gbps, is the best option for you. You will lose high sequential read performance, but with 2 SATA/300 SSDs that should still reach 500MB/s which is decent. Your IOps won't be affected that much by using SATA/300 instead of SATA/600.

Note that there are NO SATA 6Gbps controllers with native AHCI interface that can deliver full bandwidth. There are SAS solutions, but they won't support TRIM as well, and Windows does not support the SAS/SCSI 'UNMAP' equivalent.

 

[Railgun]

Host-based RAID is better than hardware RAID; which often have higher latencies and lower IOps rate.

Are you referring to hardware RAID as an external solution? If so, I don't think that's where he was going with it. I would contend that in this discussion (and probably 99% on these forums) refer hardware raid as an add-on card/seperate controller than what may be offered on a mobo. So HW and host-based are one in the same, though it may not be technically accurate in the strictest sense.

As for TRIM, needless to say that's still a sticking point for a lot of drives. If your drive has good GC, then it's somewhat irrelevant.

Now, I'm not too knowledgable about RAID functions and the nuances between SAS/SCSI and AHCI, but what is the downside of not handling UNMAP? That's the first reference I've seen pertaining to consumer arrays and I've certainly never run into an issue that revolved around that.

For reference, I'm running 4x Vertex3s in 0 on an 1880i and haven't had any issues, so other than TRIM support, I don't see what the issue would be.

 

[exdeath]

+1 for the LSI MegaRAID 9260 (available in 4, 8, and 16 port configurations). Costs less than a 240GB SSD.

512 MB cache, 2500+ MB/sec writes with 4 SSDs, etc. With good Sandforce drives, TRIM doesn't matter.

 

[exdeath]

Host-based RAID is better than hardware RAID; which often have higher latencies and lower IOps rate.

Never used a real RAID card I see. I don't know, maybe one with a PCIe 4x connector, 512 MB cache, and a multi core PowerPC controller?

 

[bryanW1995]

I think I'm going to listen to oldhippie on this one. And also exdeath, he is to ssd's what William Jefferson Clinton is to strip clubs.

Also, the new 11.5 IRST drivers are actually available in beta right now for somebody who just can't wait another month or 2 for trim. I don't have the link handy, but I'm happy to look it up for anybody who needs them now.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

Never used a real RAID card I see. I don't know, maybe one with a PCIe 4x connector, 512 MB cache, and a multi core PowerPC controller?

I'd bet he was referencing cheap <$150 RAID add-on cards like the High Points and such which do suck.

Even some higher end (as in rather expensive) 6G SATA3 caching RAID Host Bus Adapters like Adaptec 6805 or the ATTO R608 seem to not be great with SSD's (at least in my testing) in typical only-for-high-performance simple RAID setups (like RAID0) compared to the built-in Intel 6G solution. Of course, compared to the on-board Marvel 91XX ports, anything is better.

The only RAID cards I have tested that seem to work consistently excellent in all-around "performance workstation" RAID use with SSD's are the LSI's and/or the Areca's.

Note the "performance workstation" part. The disk read/write requirements of a single user workstation have NOTHING in common with how a multi-user server handles it's I/O for the drives. It seems many of the higher-end RAID controllers like the aforementioned Adaptec 6805 and ATTO R608 are tuned more specifically towards server usage which then negatively affect single user workstation performance. So they are not necessarily "bad", just not good for what most people here at Anandtech want for their PC with shiny new SSD's in a simple performance-oriented RAID.

As for losses in SSD performance due to not supporting trim, these higher-end controllers tend to have a good amount of read/write DRAM cache, so beyond benchmarks, you'd never notice any loss of performance in real-world usage trim or not.

Downsides of these high-end controllers that play well with SSD's in a workstation environment:
1. They aint cheap, not even the cabling
2. Cold start boot times are a joke because of all the extra time required to initialize the controller and the drives. Sure from the Windows logo to the desktop is extremely fast, but you tack on an extra 30 seconds minimum just to get to the Windows logo.
3. They can have motherboard compatibility issues

Upsides
1. They are Freaking fast! Even with spinner hard drives.
2. They are portable to a different PC's when you upgrade and tend to still be faster than any on-board solution.

 

[groberts101]

excellent post^. Goes along with everything I've tested and learned so far as well. I'd also add the small tidbit that latency additions from some cards can be quite intrusive to the overall experience for an OS volume regardless of the tall sequentials gained.

Highpoint 2720 and other cheaper solutions in the sub-$250(or so) market would be evidence to that fact. LSI 9240 ain't so bad though.

My Vertex 3 running on the 2720 will give 525/500 sequentials but is piss-poor in perceived speed compared to even a sata2 mobo chip. That surely affects the very perceptible primary gain we see from any SSD. Latency.

IMHO?.. most desktops models(aside from heavy workstation environments)would be better served to forget about maximum sequential performance and work on the onboard Intel raidchips inherently good random performance and to futher the cause of getting the latency as low as you can.

The "bang for the buck" that onboard raided SSD mixed together with decent raidcard storage(preferably at least 6HDD wide) is about as good as we can get right now. Low latency.. excellent randoms.. and still near uber-fast transfers between OS and storage volumes.

the new 11.5 IRST drivers are actually available in beta right now for somebody who just can't wait another month or 2 for trim.

the release notes say that this version does not have TRIM for raid yet. I've been running it for a bit now and.. sure ain't slower than the last versions, is about all I can say about it.