OCZ Vertex 30GB raid 0

[EvilOne]

Is it worth getting 2 of these in raid 0 to replace my OS drive? Also is it worth getting bigger size? dont really see myself using much space on it apart from the OS, odd game.

Would it be better geting some raptors instead?

My current drive is a slightly old 160gb sata drive, that isnt very quick and is the bottleneck of my system.

I have a 1tb drive for data and another 1tb drive that backs that up, so dont mind about losing data if raid0 fails on OS drive.

Was going to use the raid options on my P5Q-E, would this be fine with these SSD's too ? (Its called 'SuperSpeed' in bios but its just raid0 )

 

[FaceplantSi]

Hi,

I have the same mobo now and am running 3 x 30Gb Vertex SSD's in RAID0 (originally was on the P5Q-Pro).

I would say that SSD's are way faster than Raptor's and also much much quieter and draw less power, so seeing as you commented about not needing a huge amount of space for your boot drive and already having good data capacity I would think the SSD's are your best choice.

As far as using the P5Q-E's onboard Marvell 'SuperSpeed' I would steer clear of that personally and use the std red SATA ports which will require you to configure the Intel ICH10R Storage Matrix controller manually, but imo is a far better solution. By all means try the Marvell one if you are at all concerned about the manual RAID setup.

Some previous posts which might be of interest to you are:

1) - Regarding 2 x 30Gb Vertex; ATTO Benchmarks here.
2) - Regarding 3 x 30Gb Vertex; ATTO benchmarks here. (you can see that the SSD's scale very well indeed with extra drives in the array)
3) - RAID setup using the Intel ICH10R controller here.


Have a browse through the Vertex owners thread here as it has lots of good stuff, and also the OCZ Forums here.

Hope this helps - let us know what you decide and how you get on!

 

[EvilOne]

Thanks for that

Would using the Intel ICH10R as the raid controller interfere with my other drives? (also plugged into the red SATA ports). Or can you set it up so only some of those ports get used in the raid?

Never really setup a raid before as you can prob tell

 

[jbloggs]

Thanks for that

Would using the Intel ICH10R as the raid controller interfere with my other drives? (also plugged into the red SATA ports)...

No...I generally put the SATA HDD (generally x2 (two) I am putting in RAID0 on the first 2 SATA ports, then the other HDDs from SATA3->

 

[FaceplantSi]

Thanks for that

Would using the Intel ICH10R as the raid controller interfere with my other drives? (also plugged into the red SATA ports). Or can you set it up so only some of those ports get used in the raid?

Never really setup a raid before as you can prob tell

No it won't interfere - I have the 3 x 30Gb SSD's in RAID 0; 2 x 1Tb Samsung F1's in RAID 1 and my Blue-Ray drive all on the red SATA ports (so all on the ICH10R) and everything works fine.

Once I had everything installed on the boot array (OS, Apps, Games) I used Acronis True Image to get a complete image of it and store it on the RAID 1 data array so that it's avail should I need to recover the RAID 0 boot array from a drive failure (or if the SSD's need a firmware flash for example).

What will happen is that the ICH10R controller will see all the attached drives but will only put them in RAID if you specify it (and as per my setup you can have more than 1 RAID array running simultaneously). The guide I did with screenshots (my third link in my original reply) is taken from the Asus P5Q-E mobo manual.

The only other steps you'll need to take are to set the SATA mode to RAID in BIOS (can't remember if you have to set boot priority).



In your OP you ask if 2 x 30Gb will be enough... I thought so initially, hence why I had the same setup, but tbh I very quickly decided that I needed more space so added the third drive (which required a complete reload from the image).

You might also want to look into creating a 'Slipstreamed' copy of your OS for loading - it's where you can integrate your original OS disk with Service Packs, Updates, etc and also specify if you want to load items such as language support packs (I selected not to and this alone saved something like 1Gb of install on Vista64). Basically you can select what components you wish to install and hence you can have a customised installation using minimal space (you can cut out loads of the Vista bloatware!). It takes a while to do it but it is worthwhile imo.

Good luck!

 

[EvilOne]

Thanks guys.