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Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid.(How important is AHCI)? Its RAID now

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w4ss4b3
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2012/12/14 11:17:54 (permalink)
Ok So I currently have a Seagate 7200 RPM 150g HDD as my primary drive and a Seagate 500 RPM 500g HDD as my storage+ games drive. I am received a couple OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs tomorrow and I plan on trying to run them in raid 0 like the previous owner did and use it for my boot drive and my games. I have set up a raid before with WD 36gx2 Raptors but failed. They raptors were really old and I did not set them up correctly. I am sure I will have very little issues setting up my raid but I am trying to figure out whether or not I will be able to just restore my current saved image of windows 7 and load it to my new raid configuration or am I going to have to reinstall EVERYTHING all over again? I am assuming I will have to reinstall everything but hoping there is a way around that if possible. THanks for the help 
post edited by esCob4r - 2012/12/16 07:47:53

 
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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/14 20:53:44 (permalink)
    Can anyone help me with this concern?

     
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    xanderf
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/14 20:59:51 (permalink)
    If your RAID setup is in the BIOS (IE., Windows only sees it as a "single drive"), then it's just up to whether Windows has your RAID controller's drivers installed already before you backup and restore it.

    Presuming it does, shouldn't be a problem.

    See, too, the post I'd made some time back on using Windows backup/restore to move your install - probably the easiest way to do it!


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    billyash04
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 05:33:05 (permalink)
    Make sure to check the firmware on them and update them if necessary before performing making the Raid Array.




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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 17:56:01 (permalink)
    Well that didnt seem like ti worked. Also I don't know how to check the firmware on the ssds. I am currently trying to install everything now. 

     
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    xanderf
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 18:58:08 (permalink)
    esCob4r

    Well that didnt seem like ti worked. Also I don't know how to check the firmware on the ssds. I am currently trying to install everything now. 

    What, exactly, "didn't work"?  The OS didn't restore from backup, or...?


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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 19:03:26 (permalink)
    xanderf

    esCob4r

    Well that didnt seem like ti worked. Also I don't know how to check the firmware on the ssds. I am currently trying to install everything now. 

    What, exactly, "didn't work"?  The OS didn't restore from backup, or...?

     
    Well I restore the image from back up. But once i got to the windows logo thing loading it would instantly blue screen. I tried to have windows repair it but it couldnt find any ways to repair it so I said F it and started to do a clean install of everything. 

     
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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 19:08:10 (permalink)
    Also is it normal for a raid 0 set up to lose space when installed? For example my 2 120 gig ssds are showing a total of 148g now after being installed. 

     
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    boredgunner
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 19:23:02 (permalink)
    esCob4r

    Also is it normal for a raid 0 set up to lose space when installed? For example my 2 120 gig ssds are showing a total of 148g now after being installed. 

     
    That doesn't seem normal... Windows should recognize like 220GB or so.  The other day I just installed two 180GB drives in RAID 0, and Windows sees 335GB.


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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/15 19:24:03 (permalink)
    Ahhh man if I messed this up ima be upset. Been spending 2 hours or so installing stuff =X
     

     
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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 07:30:31 (permalink)
    Sorry about the multiple threads Xray. For some reason earlier I couldn't reply or anything on this one for a while. 
     
    So I have the 2 ssds set up, how ever I set the sata config in bios to raid. Am I going to have to switch this to AHCI and reformat? =X Friggin asus manual telling me to set it to raid. 

     
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    boredgunner
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 09:56:02 (permalink)
    esCob4r

    Sorry about the multiple threads Xray. For some reason earlier I couldn't reply or anything on this one for a while. 

    So I have the 2 ssds set up, how ever I set the sata config in bios to raid. Am I going to have to switch this to AHCI and reformat? =X Friggin asus manual telling me to set it to raid. 

     
    Since you're using two drives in RAID, I would expect it should be set to RAID.  I just did a RAID 0 setup for the first time on Friday, with two drives.  Once I cleaned out one of the SSDs (since the other was brand new), I installed them both, went into the BIOS, and set it to RAID instead of AHCI.  Then I rebooted and did CTRL + i (this is for Intel chipsets) to configure the RAID configuration (RAID 0, 128k stripe size for me).  After this I just went to install Windows 7 Professional x64, and it immediately recognized the RAID setup and install was smooth from there.  So here I am with Windows recognizing 335GB space.  
     
    Also from what I've read, you don't want to do a full format on an SSD... only a quick format at most.  But for wiping SSDs they say you should plug it into another PC, and use a software (often provided by the manufacturer I would think) that does a secure erase.  


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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 10:55:23 (permalink)
    boredgunner

    esCob4r

    Sorry about the multiple threads Xray. For some reason earlier I couldn't reply or anything on this one for a while. 

    So I have the 2 ssds set up, how ever I set the sata config in bios to raid. Am I going to have to switch this to AHCI and reformat? =X Friggin asus manual telling me to set it to raid. 


    Since you're using two drives in RAID, I would expect it should be set to RAID.  I just did a RAID 0 setup for the first time on Friday, with two drives.  Once I cleaned out one of the SSDs (since the other was brand new), I installed them both, went into the BIOS, and set it to RAID instead of AHCI.  Then I rebooted and did CTRL + i (this is for Intel chipsets) to configure the RAID configuration (RAID 0, 128k stripe size for me).  After this I just went to install Windows 7 Professional x64, and it immediately recognized the RAID setup and install was smooth from there.  So here I am with Windows recognizing 335GB space.  

    Also from what I've read, you don't want to do a full format on an SSD... only a quick format at most.  But for wiping SSDs they say you should plug it into another PC, and use a software (often provided by the manufacturer I would think) that does a secure erase.  

     
    Yeah thats exactly what I have done and been doing. But I was checking on how to enable trim or w.e and I guess in order to have windows automatically enable trim it needs to be set to AHCI which I can't do. Only way I could do the raid is how you explained above. 
     
    So how do I go about enabling the trim now on the SSD? I want to make sure I keep them maintained and have them last as long as they can. 

     
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    boredgunner
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 11:15:35 (permalink)
    There's no TRIM support for RAID setups, except maybe for the newest Intel RST drivers and I believe this is only for their 7 series motherboards (Z75/H77/Z77 and X79).


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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 11:19:19 (permalink)
    Bah so how do I keep the SSDs I am using maintained? I used to defrag my Hard drive like once a month. Not even sure that was healthy for it but in my opinion I thought I was keeping it clean. I am primarily concerned with being able to maintain and clean my ssds. How do I go about doing this? As for performance, if I can do something to better it with out any major changes, awesome, but the change from 1 single HDD as my C drive to 2 SSDs in raid 0 is a huge upgrade for me already is it is. 

     
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    loveha
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 11:56:17 (permalink)
    esCob4r

    Bah so how do I keep the SSDs I am using maintained? I used to defrag my Hard drive like once a month. Not even sure that was healthy for it but in my opinion I thought I was keeping it clean. I am primarily concerned with being able to maintain and clean my ssds. How do I go about doing this? As for performance, if I can do something to better it with out any major changes, awesome, but the change from 1 single HDD as my C drive to 2 SSDs in raid 0 is a huge upgrade for me already is it is. 

    There are some defrag programs that have an SSD option, but generally, it is not needed at all. Where the information is stored does not hamper the speed in which it is retrieved. Some companies have programs that will clean them like Intel's SSD Tool Box, otherwise you just let the computer sit idle for a couple hours and it will do what is generally called, Garbage Collection.

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    w4ss4b3
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 12:08:33 (permalink)
    loveha

    esCob4r

    Bah so how do I keep the SSDs I am using maintained? I used to defrag my Hard drive like once a month. Not even sure that was healthy for it but in my opinion I thought I was keeping it clean. I am primarily concerned with being able to maintain and clean my ssds. How do I go about doing this? As for performance, if I can do something to better it with out any major changes, awesome, but the change from 1 single HDD as my C drive to 2 SSDs in raid 0 is a huge upgrade for me already is it is. 

    There are some defrag programs that have an SSD option, but generally, it is not needed at all. Where the information is stored does not hamper the speed in which it is retrieved. Some companies have programs that will clean them like Intel's SSD Tool Box, otherwise you just let the computer sit idle for a couple hours and it will do what is generally called, Garbage Collection.


    Ok cool. So in the end as far as keeping the SSDs maintained I dont really need to do anything except let the pc sit idle for some time. 
     
     

     
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    doorules
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    Re:Upgrading to two OCZ Vertex 2 128g and plan to raid. 2012/12/16 23:36:06 (permalink)
    boredgunner

    There's no TRIM support for RAID setups, except maybe for the newest Intel RST drivers and I believe this is only for their 7 series motherboards (Z75/H77/Z77 and X79).


    Z series has trim with standard Intel irst drivers. 11.2 series driver or higher.

    My x79 RIVE has a new bios now with the 11.6 rom, and has trim in an R0 array.

    P67 z68 with the right driver and rom also will have trim in R0.
     
    Gigabyte and Asrock have released bios's that allow their x79 mobo.s to support trim in R0.

    Bios must have the 11.2 raid rom or higher, no E series IRST driver will give trim in R0 at this point. 
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