SATA 2 vs. SATA 3 / RAID 0

[diamondmines]

Here again.

I have 4x SATA 2 and 2x SATA 3 ports on my ASUS P9X79 MB. I've got 3 Kingston V+200 120GB SSDs. Now, if I were to RAID-0 them all, should I use 2 SATA 3 ports and 1 SATA 2 ports or should I just put them all in SATA 2 ports for stable performance? Would there be a problem if I put two of them in SATA 3 and the other one on SATA 2?

Thanks.

[Bonebreaker777]

SSD plus RAID is no-no. The TRIM instructions wouldn't get trough the drive, what would lead to performance and life degradation (even though Intel promised AHCI drivers able to support TRIM despite RAID).

Try to sell all 3x SSD and buy yourself one bigger which you could connect to the SATA 3 port? Least that what I think but I do believe this was already discussed here > ..definitely not in RAID.. or ..I don't think TRIM is supported on RAIDed drives...

Have a think about that. Not sure what the rest of the members will say.

[jim]

Unless you have really specific performance requirements, it's not going to improve performance at all.

Besides, can your motherboard even do RAID across the SATA2 and SATA3 chipsets?

[Agent]

No TRIM isn't really an issue on this drive as it's Sandforce, thus will use it's own GC. They pretty much ignore the TRIM command and do their own thing.

As above though - RAID is really for throughput. The speed you 'feel' from a SSD is because of their high IOPS. Unless you have a very specific situation where you need additional speed, it's simply not worth the bother. Even then, as stated above - sell them and get one bigger drive. Speed on SSDs normally scale with their size, so you get RAID-like performance increases simply by buying a larger drive.

The fact that you ahve different speed SATA ports probably means it's on different controllers though, so that needs looking into....

[Preacher]

I had two 30gb ocz vertex drives in raid and they were faster than the crucial m4 I upgraded to. That was without trim.

I have bought another m4 now and my z77 mobo supports trim in raid.

I would raid two of them on the sata 3 ports and store all your documents and programs if you run out of space the other one.

[Bonebreaker777]

Does it? That is actually not bad. I recently used one Pro4M in a build, will tell the owner that later he could add a another SSD to increase speed badly. You checked the TRIM support being enabled by some sort of program?

[Preacher]

Does it? That is actually not bad. I recently used one Pro4M in a build, will tell the owner that later he could add a another SSD to increase speed badly. You checked the TRIM support being enabled by some sort of program?

I haven't checked, can do with cmd, but its a standard feature on z77 chipsets. I'm away for a few days but will check when I'm back at the weekend to make sure

[Bonebreaker777]

I am sure any program that can diagnose SSD/HDD can tell you that much. For example SSD life. Would be great if you could confirm.

[diamondmines]

The RAID-0 two Kingston V+200 is much snappier in Windows and loading times are great. TRIM support doesn't really accounts for performance so I just decided to RAID 2 of the SSDs on SATA 3. I am not going to sell them yet since I am selling the entire system altogether. And I will put the other SSD in my laptop. Thanks for your comments.

[shaithis]

Does it? That is actually not bad. I recently used one Pro4M in a build, will tell the owner that later he could add a another SSD to increase speed badly. You checked the TRIM support being enabled by some sort of program?

You can enable it with a lot of intel boards by moding your bios with the latest intel raid bios.

[Bonebreaker777]

You can enable it with a lot of intel boards by moding your bios with the latest intel raid bios.

Ahh. Is modding really necessary? Didn't know there is a separated BIOS for the Intel chipsets with enabled RAID

[Agent]

Ahh. Is modding really necessary?

If you want TRIM on RAID under Intel, yes.

[jim]

Has that been integrated into new Intel boards yet then?

[Agent]

Has that been integrated into new Intel boards yet then?

Intel reference boards - I believe it has.

But remember, It's not a board issue, it's a BIOS one. If a certain board has it is dependant on if the BIOS has the latest RAID BIOS.

Motherboard makers should be using the latest code base from Intel, but it depends on the OEM. Some fork their own version when the chipset is released and run with it, while others only make minor tweaks.

The only way to be sure is to check, but newer boards are more likely to have it.

[Preacher]

I checked and trim is enabled in raid0.

[diamondmines]

Where can I check if TRIM is enabled in ASUS P9X79 MB?