SSD in RAID 0 or not

My Mom bought a m4400 that came with a sandisk 240gb ssd. Because she wants more storeage room I will be trading my normal hdd with her. Curently I am running my hdds in RAID 0, SATA ll. I was wondering what would be faster, if I bought a second ssd and put both in RAID 0, SATA ll or if I unlocked my BIOS and had the ssd running in SATA lll and my hdd in SATA ll. I should note that I have a M17x R3, so only one SATA lll port.

 

if you dont have 2 sata3 ports then raiding ssd's wont improve your performance. You are better off with non-raid in that case.

raiding with 2 sata3 ports is a whole different story tho

 

is RAIDing in SATA lll possible on the r3?

 

Have intel/MSFT solved TRIM for RAID in SSDs?

I read a test about RAID with SSD. The test was about buying one big SSD or 2 small and RAID them. It was always better to use the bigger SSD then RAID.

I dont know how fast SSDs you are using. But once you have modern SSDs with over 300 meg/sec you wont hardly see any difference with raid. Having something loading in 3 seconds instead of 5? And without TRIM the RAID would be slower and slower...

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RAID doubles the risk for data corruption/failed volume.

 

@shompa

Yes raid0 have inherent risk of raid0 being corrupted but i my experience its nothing worse than a single ssd dying.

Actually, I have had 1 raid0 array dying on me (more like corrupting), but I always kept data off that raid0 anyhow, so just a reinstall and all was good. Dying hdd's and ssd's is another ball game, I still have about 6 dead laptop hdd's and 3 ssd's in trash bin.

 

EH i have a kind of similar question so instead of starting a new thread ill ask it here

I have had my ssds in raid 0 in my m17x r2 for like a year now and notice its not as 'snappy' as it use to be

I heard that in raid 0 dosent support trim but when i check in cmd (fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify) it says thats its enabled.

And to save myself another post I will ask this :

If the answer is 'no trim is not working' can someone tell me how to break the raid + restore performace to both ssds? please!!!!!!!

 

Don't brother with raid 0 unless you have a special need with the high sequential speed.

 

Firstly, to answer the OP's original question, DO NOT set up ANY raid membership unless you want your drives to degrade and risk losing performance that is potentially irrecoverable.

You WILL NOT get TRIM support for ANY kind of SSD array on ANY machine that does not 'sport' the 7 series chispet or above AND have the correct version if Intel Rapid Storage Technology aswell - v11.0 or above, if I recall correctly. Intel have not made any effort into retro-enabling TRIM for anyone who has a computer that does not meet these minimum requirements, yet Dell actively sold this type of configuration to many buyers - including myself - in the full knowledge that performance would seriously degrade over time with the absence of native TRIM support.

You can use CMD/query and it will show that the TRIM command is getting passed, but it is not getting carried out because it can't be carried out.

My advice to ANYONE configuring a machine that does not meet these requirements would be to NOT set up ANY membership of ANY kind, your drives will take a nosedive in performance and it may or may not be recoverable - I know this as this is the EXACT position that I am in right now with my Dell SSD's in my R1 - performance was great initially, but now it sucks and I cannot restore performance to my drives at all.

Dell actually suck big time in this respect - they sold me the drives and now, when I have queried their performance, all I get back from them is "sorry sir, that is normal behaviour" - MY BACKSIDE it's normal behaviour. They have taken (when bought) close to $1000 off me for these PM830's and now they will NOT replace them. When I asked them (Alienware Technical Support) for assistance in regaining my drives performance, I was told that I'd be better of not raiding the drives and use them separately to each other under AHCI......WHY THE HELL SELL ME A MACHINE WITH A RAID CONFIGURATION IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THEY WERE GOING TO CRAP OUT!!!!!!

My advice would be to NEVER buy ANY Dell SSD - EVER....PERIOD. The technicians do not know what they are talking about, they do not offer FULL OEM support, and you can get full support for your SSD's if you buy them elsewhere - the likes of OCZ, Crucial etc etc. Also, Dell do NOT support their SSD's in terms of offering the latest firmware versions and there is no option to upgrade FW of a Dell SSD unless Dell liase with the manufacturer (mainly Samsung) which they do NOT do. There are newer FW's available for the retail versions of my drives - can I upgrade my OEM drives to it - NOPE!

Actually, some 'bright spark' in the AW Tech Support told me to download and install the Samsung Magician SSD software suite/tool and update my drives using that. They don't even know that Magician will NOT work on an OEM Dell drive, let alone allow you to use it to update firmware.

Is this acceptable behaviour from a leading OEM? - not in my eyes it's not. In my book, they are nothing short of a bunch of incompetent, robbing scumbags and I will NEVER buy a Dell SSD (or probably anything even remotely Dell orientated) EVER again because of this.

And now I shall gracefully dismount my soapbox

 

So... Dell oem ssd's in RAID 0 dont work. What about non oem's? Is this problem due to the controller or the ssd's themselves? Does M17x R3 run SATA lll RAID? My current RAID config came stock.

 

They work fine, as do any non-OEM SSD's - the problem is when you Raid them together. Performance will more than likely be blisteringly fast at the outset, but it WILL degrade over time and you run the risk that the performance lost cannot be regained.

If you have anything lower than a 7 series chipset (IvyBridge) you cannot have TRIM functioning to maintain your drives. Period. That can (and does) cause raided drives to degrade and lose performance over time. The M17x R3 will run a Sata II (two) raid without issue (because raided drives will only perform to the lowest sata performance of that raid, and that would be your Sata II port that drags the performance down to that level, not Sata III).

Would you notice the difference in terms of "real world" performance that you judge with your eyes? - possibly, depending on how keen your eyes are to how your machine is performing. You would only really notice the major difference in speeds with SSD benchamrking software such as CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD, HDTune, Anvil etc etc

The problem is the absence of automatic TRIM maintenance because the R3 is a SandyBridge 6 series chipset meaning no TRIM support until Intel decide (if they decide) to revisit older platforms/chipsets and work on them so that they CAN take advantage of TRIM.

I don't think that is likely - mainly because most manufacturers do not tend to go back over older technology and update it to current specifications. Why would they when they would make more money from people having to/wanting to upgrade to the newer technology they sell that DOES support these new functions. You could liken it to driver support - I have an M18x R1 and Dell do not actively offer new driver updates as the R1 is now obsolete and no longer sold.

Bottom line is this. Yes, you can raid them. They would peform at Sata II speeds because of the port configuration on the M17x R3 - will they maintain themselves efficiently in the absence of TRIM? - not effectively. In the absence of TRIM support, SSD's rely on what is termed "garbage collection" or "GC" in short, to perform the function of maintenance. This is not as effective, by any means, as TRIM support and hence means your drives can degrade over time when consistently run in a raid environment.

 

ok, thanks for your help

 

No problem. Happy to help out. I'd hate to see another person fall foul of the same trap that I am in myself, whereby the drives HAVE lost performance and Dell will do nothing about it.

 

Only try this once (TRIMless environment) How to: Secure Erase your Solid State Drive (SSD) with Parted Magic last step make sure you selected the proper drive (upper right first) now highlight the SSD drive.

 

I've not tried that approach, although I have read about SE. In particular, Parted Magic. I came across this: forums.partedmagic.com • View topic - Parted Magic erased physical serial number of SSD? which mentions that the serial numbers are also wiped in the process, and also seems to render the drives in a bit of a mess.

I did not want to do this, especially if it were to somehow void the warranty on my Dell OEM PM830's. Although, trying to use warranty at the moment for the drives is proving to be like trying to dry yourself after a shower with toilet paper (not very easy and leaves you in a right mess), i did not want to make things worse my obliterating data that might be used during a warranty claim.

Had it not been for the fact that they are still under warranty, I'd have nuked them already....