SSD Boot and RAID 0 F3's

Nameless_87 · 21 May 2011 at 11:27

Hi,

Currently I am running windows on a 1TB F3... however I felt the need to upgrade to something snappier

I bought an Intel 320 160GB SSD last week...

Now that backup is ready I need to ask some questions that some good soul hopefully can answer

I also bought another F3... reason is I want the SSD as the boot drive and all applications drive... while I want the 2 F3s in RAID 0. This is because I need more transfer speed. I have a DS1511+ NAS with 10TB of data.

The problem is that when I transfer from the PC to the NAS all I am getting is about 60MB/s when in fact the NAS can transfer at about 110-120 MB/s. My Network is a fully gigabit network btw. The reason of the transfer rate is that the F3 will not get that speed.

So with that in mind I bought an SSD and another F3. When I need to transfer now I will do it from the F3s in RAID 0 from which the transfer speed will be a lot better and will see more transfer speed between teh PC and NAS.

I will do a fresh install, however I have a couple of questions first.

I know to install on an SSD it is important to have that drive only installed at first, but, to set up RAID 0 (as I've never done it), do I do it before installing windows or after? (BIOS will be set to RAID not AHCI because of the RAID array)

If before... do I remove the drives after the array is set up to install windows on the SSD?

About the SSD...
Since it is brand new.. do I need to secure erase it? If yes, how can I do so before installing the OS? Or should I format it before windows installation (like a normal hard drive from the windows 7 CD?)
Also, about Intel RST drivers... how can they be installed? at boot from a CD or after windows installation?

Sorry for asking such silly questions but I really do not know!

Thanks for the help

-=Vect0r=- · 22 May 2011 at 13:35

I would use the SSD as boot/OS drive and then software RAID0 the two F3s.

This avoids setting RAID configs in the BIOS and provides faster throughput assuming you are running W7.

James J · 22 May 2011 at 14:08

-=Vect0r=- said:
I would use the SSD as boot/OS drive and then software RAID0 the two F3s.

This avoids setting RAID configs in the BIOS and provides faster throughput assuming you are running W7.

Thats what I did with a 64gb M4 SSD and 2x500gb WD hdds in raid 0

Surveyor · 22 May 2011 at 14:27

Nameless_87 said:
The problem is that when I transfer from the PC to the NAS all I am getting is about 60MB/s when in fact the NAS can transfer at about 110-120 MB/s. My Network is a fully gigabit network btw. The reason of the transfer rate is that the F3 will not get that speed.

A Samsung F3 has a read speed in excess of 100MB/s.

If your existing setup is not transferring at more than 60MB/s then the problem must lie elsewhere.

AbsenceJam · 22 May 2011 at 15:00

As above. Try it with your SSD and you'll see the same speeds I imagine.

Nameless_87 · 22 May 2011 at 17:31

This is what HD Tune pro reports:

Note ... the drive has 4 bad sectors.

Also, I don't know what could be wrong then...

Router is brand new... A Linksys E4200 and a new HP ProCurve V1810 switch as well.

Everything is brand new, except the hard drive... I don't think it is a problem with the network.

Surveyor · 22 May 2011 at 18:00

Try copying some files from your SSD onto your NAS and see what the speed is then.

Nameless_87 · 22 May 2011 at 18:13

I cannot... I have not installed the SSD yet, because I was going to do everything at once... i.e. RAID 0 F3's and SSD with windows 7 some time next week

Also, I been reading some things and 7200RPM drives get around 50-60MB/s transfer speeds over a gigabit network... so I guess the hard drive is the limiting factor...

Surveyor · 22 May 2011 at 18:56

Nameless_87 said:
I cannot... I have not installed the SSD yet, because I was going to do everything at once... i.e. RAID 0 F3's and SSD with windows 7 some time next week

Also, I been reading some things and 7200RPM drives get around 50-60MB/s transfer speeds over a gigabit network... so I guess the hard drive is the limiting factor...

I don't see how that can be.

If the network can actually transfer at 1Gb/s (125MB/s) then the drive shouldn't be limited to 50-60MB/s).

The network should transfer the data as fast as it can be read at one end and written at the other.

There's obviously a limit on the speed of the network as nothing ever works at it's theoretical maximum speed. There may also be a bottleneck on your NAS as to how fast it can write the data.

As your NAS has 10TB of storage I assume it's in some form of RAID. RAID 5, for example, has quite slow write speeds due to the overheads in calculating the parity.

Why don't you test it out by putting the SSD into your PC, copy some files onto it and then transfer those files onto the NAS.

AbsenceJam · 22 May 2011 at 19:16

Just because your NAS is Gigabit doesn't mean you will get Gigabit speeds, even if iPerf or similar says so. Off the shelf NAS's like yours are often slow.

Nameless_87 · 22 May 2011 at 22:01

@Surveyor, will try it out next week as I really don't have the time right now and I am almost finished in a project I am doing. You are correct, I am using Synology Hybrid RAID which is essentially RAID 5. The drives I have in are 5x 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7k3000.

@AbsenceJam... did you even see the DS1511+? It has advertised speeds of over 160MB write and over 190MB read using link aggregation and advertised 100MB+ read and write without link aggregation. This off the shelf NAS costs £650 without the HDDs, so it is not a crappy product and I am sure that it can reach advertised speeds, because other people apperently did it...

Surveyor · 22 May 2011 at 22:48

When you have time give it a go transferring from the SSD to the NAS.

You'll soon find out if there's a bottleneck somewhere.

Nameless_87 · 23 May 2011 at 09:22

Will try it when I have the chance and report back. Thanks

If someone can answer me my original questions back in post 1 please?

Thanks

merlin6r · 23 May 2011 at 18:41

I think you can install windows while you have your other drives in, but being a careful anorak myself I did it in this order:

Set your bios to RAID so when you install windows it will install the necessarys.
I just connected the SSD and installed Windows 7 to it and it made its own partition (including a 100mb system reserved partition).

I installed the RST drivers from my motherboard driver disk after I had installed windows.

I havent bought the 2 drives I'm gonna use for RAID yet, so I just connected my 1tb samsung and booted up. I had to swap drive letters with the DVD drive cos it was D: and I wanted the 1tb to be D:

Now when I boot up i can press ctrl+I to set up my RAID or i can do it from windows using the intel RST icon in the system tray, I'm not sure which would be best.

Anyone care to comment on if theres any difference?

I've also disabled Windows search indexing in services.msc because I read that it wears the SSD drive out.

Seq read using sata 6 port: