Ive bought myself a couple of OCZ Vertex 30gb SSD with the view to RAID0 them and use as the boot drive for my PC, which will be running Win7 64bit.
This is my first experiance with Solid state HDDs and even with RAID and with 64bit OS so does anyone have any advice for me to get it going all smoothly.
Cheers
Windows 7 is really good at handling SSDs, it been optimised for it.
I personally wouldnt run raid 0 though, as effectively you have doubled your chances of failure, you will get the benefits of double speed write, but would sooner be more secure and run Raid 1 (If you are using 2 disks) still get double read, only same write though.
Quote from: XEntityWindows 7 is really good at handling SSDs, it been optimised for it.
I personally wouldnt run raid 0 though, as effectively you have doubled your chances of failure, you will get the benefits of double speed write, but would sooner be more secure and run Raid 1 (If you are using 2 disks) still get double read, only same write though.
I was thinking about the cons of raid0 like disc failure but if those discs are only going to be running the os and progs, any important files will be stored on a different old sckool disk so if it does fail then nothing important would be lost.
Im not sure about SSD but Ive never had a HDD fail on me so would be daft lossing out on a performance gain just because of a slight chance of failure.
Ive heard somewhere that you shouldnt use SSD drives for pagefile/virtual memory, any ideas?
Cool, would probably be an idea to backup the drive on a semi regular basis, at least if it does fail you can just boot to a different drive or one of the SSDs providing you only use half the space :)
I assume you are going for speed not space in any case :)
Quote from: XEntityIve heard somewhere that you shouldnt use SSD drives for pagefile/virtual memory, any ideas?
I've seen people advise this because it doesn't thrash the disks as much so they last longer....but writing the pagefile to a slow disk is going to make your system run like a salad dodger up a hill.
The way modern SSDs are rated I would say thrash them all you like, by the time you come round to replacing them they're going to be a fraction of the price.
(edit: spelling)
If you have enough real memory you should be able to switch off virtual memory without any issues.
The modern SSD is set to write to different areas of the memory it has available so it doesnt repetitively write in one area. The problem with failures is the bits get worn out if you overwrite them often enough.
If you are running HDDs as well then just put the swap and temp folders on there or if you have loads of RAM just create a RAM drive :)
its youve got enough ram.... just disable the page file.... I disabled mine years ago and havent looked back once !
also been running raid 0 for my main drives for years without any problems :-)
(5 disks right now, had a 4 disk array before that)
p.s. let us know how they preform..... Ive been thinking about doing the same for a while !
I expect they are the older SSDs not with the Sandforce 1200 controller , so writes will be pretty slow compared to the next gen SSDs
so Raid 0 would be the way i would go.
2 of the newer 1s in raid 0 will probably top out the SATA (500+ m/s read & write) .
Well that seems to be a waste of money!
My mobo, Asus P5KC, doesnt seem to have proper RAID capabilities as far as I can see.
it has 5SATA ports internally, 1 of which goes through an onboard JMICRON raid controller.
The other 4 are just normal non-raid and dont get detected by the RAID controller.
The other RAID capable port is an external one next to the sound outputs and ethernet sockets etc.
what is the point of that!?
Or am I missing something?
anyone recommend a decent, cheap PCIE RAID card?
Dont know much about the mobo but for an external(E SATA) raid controller Adaptec AAR-1225SA PCI Express x1 2-Port eSATA RAID Controller [AAR-1225SA]
i dont want esata. just a normal internal sata raid card.
There is one on ebuyer for about 17quid that will probably do me.
edit: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152107
http://www.tekheads.co.uk/product/SATA-II-2-Port-with-RAID-Controller-Card-PCI-Exp_18841.html
From Tekheads.
Cheers, for some reason I always forget to check tek.
Im too impatient for all this web shopping Ill go to maplin in the morning to see if they have one not too much more expensive.
remember to make sure its pci-e not just a pci one etc.... pci tops out at 133meg/sec (iirc?)
got it all up and running now with a fresh install of Win764 bit.
HDD performance with windows drivers on the Windows experiance index is 7.2 so far.
there are a few issues with one partition on my normal hdd not showing up anymore tho.
how fast does it feel ?
Im guessing itll speed up a lot once you get it all setup right etc...?
no idea where it is, but have you set the option to tell windows youre running SSDs ?
Im getting 6.4 for the hard drive score on mine, but I get the impression anyone can get a 5, a 6 is harder, and a 7 is really good ?
I havent got enough time to play fully atm but here are couple of sandra benchmarks.
it does feel alot faster, apps just load straight away no lag at all.
before:
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/hddreadbench.png)
after:
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/benchssd.png)
Ive never had too much faith in hard drive benchmarks....
according to that, your drives are being beaten for access time by a traditional hard drive !
the top one is my old traditional hdd :)
edit:
here is the bar graph for the new drives.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/ssd2.png)
Can you do a hdtach short bench? Im wondering if its worth going to ssd from this -
(http://www.palmer934.plus.com/hdtach.jpg)
just done it and it is pretty much the same average read and slightly lower burst speed, so it looks like Ive still got some tweaking to do.
somthing is not quite right here, according to loads of online reviews of these drives I should be getting about double the speed Im acually getting.
I dont know what is going on!
I formatted and started again and still got the same results, and then started experiencing random restarts and one of the drives kept disappearing from the raid on POST.
So I though it must be a faulty drive.
but I have connected them into my mobo so they are running individually (not raid) and they seem fine and very very fast.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/Untitle1d.png)
any ideas?
crappy maplin raid card being sh*t?
Why not pop over to the OCZ forums & see if you can get any ideas.
My Vertex 2 has a similar graph in HDtach to yours but burst is a lot higher(245 to 260).
Atto harddrive benchmark seems to give realiable results.http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1749/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.46.html
Mine scores about 250 m/s for both read & write , could optimise for more but it is fast enough as it is :)
Have u tried AHCI mode ? might be the difference
Quote from: bigsteveWhy not pop over to the OCZ forums & see if you can get any ideas.
My Vertex 2 has a similar graph in HDtach to yours but burst is a lot higher(245 to 260).
Atto harddrive benchmark seems to give realiable results.http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1749/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.46.html
Mine scores about 250 m/s for both read & write , could optimise for more but it is fast enough as it is :)
Have u tried AHCI mode ? might be the difference
ive been tawling loads of foums inc ocz for ages and nothing seems to match my prob, ill have another play tomorrow and failing that I start a thread on ocz
Once youre happy let us know what you think as I am thinking of a single SSD for windows 7 and Eclipse. Eclipse is a Java IDE that generates 2 billion tiny tiny temp files an thus I think would benefit from solid state.
a tenner says it is the crappy raid card :(
anyone have any idea how to enable NCQ, apparently that might help me.
NCQ should always be on as it is usually part of the controller for SATA, so unless youre using IDE mode in Windows instead of RAID/AHCI it should be working with it enabled I would have thought.
im not sure I just found this page
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?68773-Read-speeds-slower-than-write-speeds
that is pretty much the problem I am having.
anyway I think I will RMA one drive and the raid card and just have one as the boot drive.
because 1 on its own is so fast ? or are you just pissed off with it now ?
did you try enabling NCQ (whatever that is?)
(edit, Native Command Queuing, i know what that is, but had no idea thats what NCQ stood for!)
Quote from: knightybecause 1 on its own is so fast ? or are you just pissed off with it now ?
did you try enabling NCQ (whatever that is?)
(edit, Native Command Queuing, i know what that is, but had no idea thats what NCQ stood for!)
because one on its own is faster than I can get them running in RAID 0.
I cant find how to enable or even check NCQ on the RAID card.
cant beleive Ive done it but Ive just ordered a newer, higher spec Motherboard with full onboard RAID.
Its like going back in time 5years when I used to spend all my wages on a Graphics card or somthing :gag:
anyway see if that gets me the performance Im expecting, should be about 400mb/s read and 250mb/s write.
edit: gone for one of these. http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=esOE5RDJVEmQI86w
Quote from: DEViANCEcant beleive Ive done it but Ive just ordered a newer, higher spec Motherboard with full onboard RAID.
Its like going back in time 5years when I used to spend all my wages on a Graphics card or somthing :gag:
anyway see if that gets me the performance Im expecting, should be about 400mb/s read and 250mb/s write.
edit: gone for one of these. http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=esOE5RDJVEmQI86w
Lol i remeber those days .
Xfire so need another Vid card & a faster cpu.
Should get the job done.
Scanned (quick scan mode)my C: drive for malware using Win 7 defender took 22 secs (thats 30gig) & 15 mins for full scan of my 150 gig main storage so a single SSD is pretty fast.
Quote from: bigsteveQuote from: DEViANCEcant beleive Ive done it but Ive just ordered a newer, higher spec Motherboard with full onboard RAID.
Its like going back in time 5years when I used to spend all my wages on a Graphics card or somthing :gag:
anyway see if that gets me the performance Im expecting, should be about 400mb/s read and 250mb/s write.
edit: gone for one of these. http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=esOE5RDJVEmQI86w
Lol i remeber those days .
Xfire so need another Vid card & a faster cpu.
Should get the job done.
Scanned (quick scan mode)my C: drive for malware using Win 7 defender took 22 secs (thats 30gig) & 15 mins for full scan of my 150 gig main storage so a single SSD is pretty fast.
yeah single ssds seem plenty fast really Im just determined to get my 2 in raid0 working.
what rating does windows experiance index give your drive?
7.2 but i have basically pugnplayed , there is more headroom but cannot be arsed to fiddle with settings.
the new mobo finally arrived today and only just managed intalling win764bit.
straight away before any drivers Im getting 7.6 windows experianc rating on the hard disc test.
things are looking up. still got to re-overclock my cpu as it is back down to the standard 1.8GHz clockspeed. SLOWWWWW!
maybe not! I ran a hdd benchmark and after a couple of mins (getting awesome results too 400Mb read 250Mb) it BSOD and on reboot one of the drives had disapeared off the RAID.
That happened a few times on the maplin raid card and it was the same drive disappearing so I guess that is faulty and needs an rma.
bastards!
:-(
Unlucky m8.
What a pain in the butt.
Got my replacement today after sucessful rma.
Installed it and setup raid, installed win7 and started installing drivers. During a reboot the boot file for windows has disappeared and it just tries to boot from the dvd.
Wft! reinstalling win7 AGAIN. Typing this off my phone.
FINALLY!
got it setup and running as I was hoping, with no crashes.
Maxes out @ 150MB/s Write and 390MB/s Read.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/sddbench.png)
Glad to see you got it sorted, that looks FAST!
Read looks very good but write looks slow ,
Quote from: bigsteveRead looks very good but write looks slow ,
its not slow but I know what you mean it should be faster than that, nearer to 250 apparently.
so how does it feel using it now ?
(http://keycomm.co.uk/orchids/SSD.JPG)
This is my non optimised Vertex 2 60 GB drive.
so basically is it worth the hassle ?
if you can get it working perfect then the potential speeds are massive, 400Mb/s read 320Mb/s write.
some people get that straight out the box but looking around the enthusiasts forums many people dont, including me :(
my system is very fast, files transfer around the drive almost instantly, windows boots in about 20secs and applications that are installed on the c: drive load almost instantly too, but people with the exact same setup as me get better benchmarks for some reason.
I would probably just got for a single high performance ssd as a boot drive than messing around trying to get raid working.
I think the controllers are still somewhat in their infancy and Id suspect this is part of the problem when it comes to trying RAID configurations with them. At least prices are finally coming down!
Actual SSD drivers/controllers seem to be pretty good but Motherboard support is very iffy.Had a few people moan @ me about Gigabytes 6gb sata not being compatible with Crucials latest SSDs
Finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a SSD, got a OCZ 60GB Vertex for my gaming comp which I didn't think is a bad price at just under a £100 :)
(http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/atto.jpg)
Thats on a clean install with just drivers installed.
(http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/atto2.jpg)
That is with Windows updated, AV, a few others progs installed and WoW (which is 22gigs), left with about 15gigs unused.
Im quite impressed with the performance, it is a lot quicker than a pair of Raptors in Raid0, but it did take me 3 attempts to get Windows installed on it, it just ground to a halt at the part when it starts writing files to disk on the first 2 attempts, but has worked flawlessly since.
Not going to upgrade my HTPC to one yet, which is more of a workhorse than my gaming comp, 60gigs would be too small for me and I would get pissed off with having to shift stuff when it was getting full after a few months lol when the 100-120gig drives drop to just over a hundred I will :)
Can't believe it has been 2 years since I got the ssd's
Quick update on how they are running 2 years and 3 months on,
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/ssds_zps3659c1ec.jpg)
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/ssds1_zpsc7c7e55d.jpg)
not good lol
looks like a trip to OCZ forums.
How much free space do you have? I'm guessing TRIM hasn't been running properly because its in RAID hence slow writes? I think you need the right Intel drivers for it to work properly but haven't looked into it myself as I'm not using RAID with mine.
Quote from: Clock'd 0Ne on January 05, 2013, 14:07:53 PM
How much free space do you have? I'm guessing TRIM hasn't been running properly because its in RAID hence slow writes? I think you need the right Intel drivers for it to work properly but haven't looked into it myself as I'm not using RAID with mine.
I thought it might be a TRIM issue because of the RAID. I'm also running a fresh install so I am thinking the RAID drivers are wrong or old possibly because the benchmark results are very different each time I run it.
I just updated the FW on the SDDs and ran atto twice straight after each other.
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/ssds2_zps1663dcbe.jpg)
(http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s81/robdav99/ssds3_zpsb5bb1022.jpg)
completely random
edit: over 40gb of 60 free
pagefile switched off.
Is raid still not advisable? I'm getting a new laptop for work and my plan was to run a 250gb ssd and a 500gb (only 250 used) hdd in mirrored raid.
I work on stuff that requires I leave behind a HDD after working on it so my plan was...
Normal job, leave both drives in laptop running in mirrored raid.
Leaving job, remove ssd and work on a degraded raid afterwards I'd put in fresh hdd and ssd, repair the array.
Was hoping that would give me the speed benefits of ssd on jobs I could use it on and make life super easy on jobs I can't.
Think it'd work?
if mirror raid a normal HD and an SSD you'll only get the speed of the normal hard drive :-(
Well that sucks :( was hoping the raid controller would send the read request out to both and just return the fastest response. Then HDD cache would handle writes so it all magically happened in the background.
a fancy raid controller can... but not a laptop one :-(
Quote from: knighty on January 06, 2013, 12:32:26 PM
a fancy raid controller can... but not a laptop one :-(
Hmm... Well it is a high end machine, so maybe I'll get lucky will give it a go and report back if so, should have it in a week or so. Fingers crossed.
should be able to google the model etc.. and find out first ?
if it's a no go, you'll be better off with just 2 x fast hard drives ?
Quote from: knighty on January 06, 2013, 13:53:22 PM
should be able to google the model etc.. and find out first ?
if it's a no go, you'll be better off with just 2 x fast hard drives ?
It's a custom build so no real model name to say. See what you're saying about the 2 fast HDDs but hoping the ssd works in this manner, otherwise you're right I'll default back to the two HDDs and stick with the performance hit.