Can you use raid if.........

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
Posts
8,777
Your using none raid drives on same controller and if you can just select either IDE, AHCI, RAID mode for the sata controller in the bios? As I would need to use raid and none raid on the same sata controller:(
 
It's perfectly possible to have single disk volumes and RAID volumes on the same controller when it's in RAID mode. Just connect the disk and don't add it to an array.
 
rpstewart said:
It's perfectly possible to have single disk volumes and RAID volumes on the same controller when it's in RAID mode. Just connect the disk and don't add it to an array.
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Ah... like I have my ssd drive as my boot drive and I thinking about changing my games/storage drive and having 2 drives for that, so games will load up quicker and then will be on par with my ssd, or there abouts anyway.

So my ssd and dvd drive will still run ok, if I change the controller to RAID in the bios?
 
2 or even 3 mechanical HDDs in RAID won't load up games anything like as fast as even a "cheapy" SSD - I tried for awhile with 4x short stroked 7200.12 drives in RAID0 and even with sustained 300+MB/s and 4ms access times they still took around 3x longer to load game levels than a Patriot PS-100 (entry level SSD).
 
Rroff said:
2 or even 3 mechanical HDDs in RAID won't load up games anything like as fast as even a "cheapy" SSD - I tried for awhile with 4x short stroked 7200.12 drives in RAID0 and even with sustained 300+MB/s and 4ms access times they still took around 3x longer to load game levels than a Patriot PS-100 (entry level SSD).
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Ah bummer, so I'll be wasting my time then?
 
Some people might have a different opinion on it - but I've only ever seen an actual noticeable increase in performance using RAID over a single mechanical HDD when working with large files and/or in an enterprise environment - some games might see a decrease in load times but a lot of games need both fast transfer rates and fast seek times as they are working with a mixture of big and small files and mechanical HDD RAID while increasing transfer rates tends to slow down seek times.

I ended up replacing 2 of my mechanical drives with "cheapy" SSDs and junction linking from my steam install on my mechanical RAID to the SSDs for games I wanted loading faster.
 
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Rroff said:
Some people might have a different opinion on it - but I've only ever seen an actual noticeable increase in performance using RAID over a single mechanical HDD when working with large files and/or in an enterprise environment - some games might see a decrease in load times but a lot of games need both fast transfer rates and fast seek times as they are working with a mixture of big and small files and mechanical HDD RAID while increasing transfer rates tends to slow down seek times.

I ended up replacing 2 of my mechanical drives with "cheapy" SSDs and junction linking from my steam install on my mechanical RAID to the SSDs for games I wanted loading faster.
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Thanks very much for that info. Ideally I need 1 of these then, but that wont be happening unless I come into some money:eek:.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-080-OC&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427
 
If I were to get 1 of those OCZ ssd 4x pcie cards, I wouldnt be able to get full speed as the spec of my motherboard says that small pcie slot is only 1x?

Expansion Slots
1 x PCI-E X16, 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth), 1 x PCI-E X1, 3 x PCI
 
Phil2008 said:
If I were to get 1 of those OCZ ssd 4x pcie cards, I wouldnt be able to get full speed as the spec of my motherboard says that small pcie slot is only 1x?

Expansion Slots
1 x PCI-E X16, 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth), 1 x PCI-E X1, 3 x PCI
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You would put it in the "1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth)" slot.
 
Phil2008 said:
Ah right, and it would work ok, as the slot is too long?
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You can put a x1, x4, x8 or x16 card in a x16 slot and it will work fine subject to the available bandwidth.

In your case the x16 slot is only x4 speed so anything that needs more than that would be bottlenecked or not work.

If you were to look at the back of your motherboard you'd see how the different speed slots are electrically connected.

A x16 slot is connected for the whole length of the card.

Lesser speeds only have connections to part of the slot where smaller cards fit.

 
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Ah So that x4 is a full length slot for a graphics card? If this is the case, Im amazed that graphics cards work in the slot

I think I am going to go for it and spend stupid money on a drive get 1 of those OCZ beasts:eek:, but I wont be able to get 1 for a few months. Im hoping when I order, the 480gb will be near enough the same price as the 240gb version that is today,
 
Phil2008 said:
Ah So that x4 is a full length slot for a graphics card? If this is the case, Im amazed that graphics cards work in the slot
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It would work at x4 speed.


Phil2008 said:
I think I am going to go for it and spend stupid money on a drive get 1 of those OCZ beasts:eek:, but I wont be able to get 1 for a few months. Im hoping when I order, the 480gb will be near enough the same price as the 240gb version that is today,
Click to expand...

A massive price crash on SSD's.

We'll wait and see.
 
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