Adding another SSD for more storage space is raid the best option?

jamesd · 6 Nov 2013 at 21:45

I have managed to pick up another SSD identical to my main boot SSD for cheap. My main SSD is getting a bit full so I was planning to add the new drive and create a raid array.
Is this the best option or would I be better just adding it as another single drive? I already have a 1TB drive for movies and pictures and some of my steam games. Ideally though I want to have more of my games on an SSD and was thinking I could raid the two, have better performance and double the capacity. Is raid the best option?

Glanza · 6 Nov 2013 at 21:51

I'd make the new ssd purely for gaming i.e install Steam etc and all your games on that.

jamesd · 11 Nov 2013 at 09:58

Giggz said:
I'd make the new ssd purely for gaming i.e install Steam etc and all your games on that.

After messing about with RAID 0 I think you may be right! I thought I could just use Acronis to image my SSD, then put the two in RAID 0 and get Acronis to restore the image to the RAID drive. However it hasn't worked like that the PC refuses to boot after the image is put on the RAID drive. It says insert bootable media. I changed the mode from AHCI to RAID in the bios and edited the registry to prevent it from blue screening, and tested that I could boot with this bios set to RAID before I took the image. So I am not sure why it hasn't worked. Unless you cant image a single drive then re image it on a RAID drive.

Now I'm off to research how to move my steam games instead.

Gunda · 11 Nov 2013 at 16:21

probably need to make sure that Acronis can create a bootable image from your existing image.

wazza300 · 11 Nov 2013 at 16:25

you need to have the raid drivers already installed into the current os

the only way to do that is to set to raid before you install windows,there are reg hacks to trick windows into installing the raid drivers(without re installing windows) ive done it to enable ssd caching works fine

then you could restore your os/image to a raid array (once you setup the raid in the console)

jamesd · 11 Nov 2013 at 23:11

Gunda said:
probably need to make sure that Acronis can create a bootable image from your existing image.

The image I created was bootable, I have restored it to a spare mechanical drive and it worked fine. However the same method didn't work when restoring to the RAID drive? Its weird I don't understand why it didn't work. If I boot up with the spare drive and look at the RAID drive all the data appears to be there but it just wont boot from it.

wazza300 said:
you need to have the raid drivers already installed into the current os

the only way to do that is to set to raid before you install windows,there are reg hacks to trick windows into installing the raid drivers(without re installing windows) ive done it to enable ssd caching works fine

then you could restore your os/image to a raid array (once you setup the raid in the console)

I think the raid drivers were installed and operational as I did a few registry tweaks to get the PC to boot after changing the bios to raid. I did have bother getting the tweaks to work though in the end I used the marvel controller and put my boot drive on that, then set the intel controller to raid mode. This installed drivers and when I connected the boot drive back to the intel controller in raid mode windows booted with no problems. I then imaged this using Acronis and thought it would just be a case of creating the raid array, booting from the Acronis CD and restoring the image to the array, But it doesn't seem to have worked like that

Thanks for all the suggestions, I must be doing something wrong I just haven't figured out what yet lol.

Another quick question does it matter what the stripe size is set to? I read the documentation and it said the intel software picks the best size depending on the disks and raid type. It suggested I used a 16kb stripe for the raid 0 array with 2x intel 330 180GB SSD's. This is going to be my main boot drive with Windows/Programs and steam games on, I don't know if that makes a difference to what stripe size I should choose?

wazza300 · 12 Nov 2013 at 00:16

yh stripe size does improve performance slightly but ive no idea which is best tbh

to play safe id pick what ms chooses

jamesd · 12 Nov 2013 at 21:11

wazza300 said:
yh stripe size does improve performance slightly but ive no idea which is best tbh

to play safe id pick what ms chooses

After reading up I have just left it set at the intel recommended size. I figured it is intel raid and intel ssd's and intel software I am using so there recommendation's cant be far off?

I have managed to get the SSD's in raid to boot WOOHOO! It was a bit of a mess about but I managed without loosing data.

What I ended up doing was imaging my primary single SSD with Acornis and re storing that image to a spare HDD I had. I then connected my new SSD and booted up from the spare HDD and ran the intel rapid storage program, created the raid using that. During the install there was an option to keep the data from one of the drives. I selected the one old one with my data and windows install on it. the software created the raid and migrated the data. Once it had finished I switched off and disconnected my spare HDD and booted from the raid. It booted no problem, I did notice that the partition size on the raid was the same size as the single disk I kept the data from, but I used a partition tool to extend the partition to the full capacity. Everything has been working smooth so hopefully that's it.