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?)