RAID & ACHI possible?

anti5580

anti5580

anti5580

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Hi, hope someone can shed some light on this for me ...

I currently have an OCZ Vertex 2E 120Gb as the main OS drive and have 2 Raptors in RAID0 for Steam games.

Do I still have ACHI for the SSD? In the BIOS I can only choose either ACHI or RAID, currently it is set to RAID for the Raptors.

Essentially I want to have the SSD optimised the best I could but I know if I have RAID I would lose TRIM (I think) even though my SSD is not in RAID.

Any help would be grateful.
 
yes as above you can have both. You have to choose RAID mode in BIOS then install the latest intel rapid storage driver for RAID not AHCI. RAID is a superset of AHCI so your RAID set will run as it should and the SSD will run in AHCI mode and TRIM will be passed through.

if you're reinstalling the OS the easiest way is to unzip the drivers on a USB stick and load them from that during windows install. you click 'load drivers' or something like that during the drive(s) format/partition section..
 
Thanks for the input!

I currently have a fresh install of Win7 x64 and installed Intel Rapid Storage Technology 10.6.0.1002 (RAID Version) after I installed Win7. The BIOS is set to RAID prior to the install.

Is it OK I leave it as it is? Or should I reinstall Win7 and load the drivers prior to the Win7 install?

Also I read that you can't just format the Win7 and reinstall in order to preserve performance?
 
Last edited:
Leave it.

If you ever want to reinstall Windows, do a secure erase on the SSD then install directly to the raw drive space (do NOT format or partition before or during install). Doing a reformat without a secure erase is essentially pointless.
 
OK cool I'll leave it.

Something slightly different, I did a CrystalDiskMark on the SSD earlier and got the following result, the write seems a bit slow ... is this correct or have I configured something incorrectly?

f4itti.png
 
Don't use Crystal Disk Mark or any benchmark other than ATTO on Sandforce drives, you can limit the write speeds and it won't recover unless you do a secure erase.
 
OK cool ...

Just for reference, if I want to do a fresh install on Win7 what is the correct procedure? I'm a bit confused as I normally just select the drive I want to install Win7, delete the partition and install Win7 on it. How would you do secure erase during Win7 setup?

Sorry I only got the SSD yesterday, haven't really read up on it enough yet.
 
DragonQ said:
Leave it.

If you ever want to reinstall Windows, do a secure erase on the SSD then install directly to the raw drive space (do NOT format or partition before or during install). Doing a reformat without a secure erase is essentially pointless.
Click to expand...

correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm sure windows makes you partition/format to continue with the install? it was a while ago so a may be wrong..
 
anti5580 said:
OK cool ...

Just for reference, if I want to do a fresh install on Win7 what is the correct procedure? I'm a bit confused as I normally just select the drive I want to install Win7, delete the partition and install Win7 on it. How would you do secure erase during Win7 setup?

Sorry I only got the SSD yesterday, haven't really read up on it enough yet.
Click to expand...

no no never do that with a SSD. you always got secure erase for fresh install. most people use hdderase from here: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml. make sure to read the readme it tells you how to use it. basically though you copy the exe file to a usb stick or cd then set it as first boot in bios, restart, and it should run.
 
another thing i should mention is sometimes hdderase wont run if the sata mode is set to RAID or AHCI in bios so it has to be set to IDE compatability mode.
 
yes from what i can remember it's pretty self explanatory and just a 'next,next,next' situation, you can also load them RST drivers on the drive select screen if you want, I do personally but it's not essential. most people also recommend disconnecting all other drives not needed for install.
 
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