G750JH - Quad mSATA SSD RAID-0 Possibilities?

Hey guys, I opened the drive port on my ASUS, and of course it has the 2x128GB mSATA SSD's on a mSATA to 2.5" SATA adapter board, alongside with the 1TB HDD in the other port.

My question is, if I take out the 1TB HDD, and purchase another mSATA to SATA adapter board along with 4x256GB mSATA SSD's of my choosing, would the storage controller be able to utilize a quad RAID-0 array across both drive bays?

Thanks!

 

I'd recommend a pair of 500gb (samsung 840 evo) drives instead for better small file speeds.

 

You may be able to do so, and the BIOS should able to allow quad RAID 0 if it's a full featured RAID ROM, unless otherwise crippled by Intel when given to ASUS.

 

Depends on how the sata are routed, and if the adapter board has a controller on itself.

The intel raid driver can careless about anything as long as each drive is on a proper sata channel.

So it may be a quad raid 0 or a raid 0 of 2 raid 0.

 

I definitely see where you're coming from, although I'm facing a situation in which I would benefit from the raw throughout that a quad RAID-0 array can offer. I would most likely be going the 840 EVO mSATA route.

I'm mainly looking to see if anyone has had any experience/success with a quad RAID-0 array in a G750, using an additional dual mSATA to SATA adapter board in the secondary drive bay.

 

Please note that mSATA to SATA adapter contains a separate controller which will share the bandwidth among both drives.
Your max performance will still be limited by the available throughout from a single SATA port but not doubled.

 

Thank you! This addresses my main concerns that I had in potentially going forward with this. I suppose the only way to truly find out now is to just do it, huh?

 

Yup, that's it.

 

Duly noted. Cramming 2 mSATA ports using a secondary controller through 1 SATA port sounds like it could easily negate any benefits of a quad RAID-0 array in this laptop.

 

I ran CrystalDiskMark on my 2x128GB mSATA SSD's arrayed on the mSATA to 2.5" SATA adapter.

As I understand it, it should be impossible to breach the 750MB/s (6Gbps) SATA III bandwidth ceiling, as the adapter's controller is seemingly taking two SATA III RAID-0 streams and condensing them through a single SATA III channel.

Here's where my throughput stands at this moment:

So somehow, I'm reaching almost 7Gbps on a supposed single SATA III channel.

I drew this diagram out earlier, to sorta of visualize how I believe everything's working. It shouldn't be possible to breach the 6Gbps barrier according to how I believe my notebook's storage system is set up:


Any ideas?

 

What drives do you have?

I think asus may have done something to improve the throughput.

 

FIGHTYARD, you've dis-proven your single SATA III interface theory and are now on a 2 SATA III situation - which is what it is. Each 128GB M.2 SATA SSD has it's own SATA III interface.



You can actually be getting better throughput, this is what I get on my G750JH

View attachment 117248

That is after installing SetupRST.exe for Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology support, and set the cache to write-back.



https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=&ProductID=2101&ProdId=2101



And, running Raxco PerfectDisk set for SMARTPlacement, optimize then select all remaining fragments, and optimize one last time. Then set back to SSDOptimize for ongoing optimization.



Raxco PerfectDisk Pro - trial is fully functional
PerfectDisk Professional | Raxco Software

Have fun

 

The HWinfo summary only show the supported interface of the drives not the port.

I dig around. The two 128gb SSD are not msata form factor. It seems that they are two m.2 SSD onto a 2.5 adapter. Not sure it is pcie or sata lane to the board/how they implement it~~

 

baii, M.2 SATA in the G750JH/JZ, in the new G751 it is M.2 PCIE.

And, the actual active interface speed is the speed currently listed. Each drive runs at SATA III speed, and the RAID0 is 2x SATA III speed.



As you can see it shows the drive controller best speed running @ the current speed of 6gb/s

I have tested my G750JH M.2 SATA cards individually and as RAID0 extensively.

 

Kevin, you should know that the G750JH has M.2 SATA SSD's, not mSATA, and each M.2 SATA SSD is plugged in to it's own SATA III controller, so you actually get 2x SATA III when running the 2 x M.2 SATA SSD's in RAID0.

The G750JH has 3 SATA III interfaces and 1 SATA 1 interface - for the optical Bay. Others have posted using a disk tray in the Optical Bay and seeing only SATA 1 speeds.

A 2nd adapter with 2 M.2 SATA SSD's would share the bandwidth of that single SATA III interface to the 2nd Bay, bringing down the max throughput to 3x SATA III vs 4x SATA III if there were 4 SATA III interfaces.

Except for capacity you would do as well to match a 2.5" SSD in the 2nd Bay with the 2 M.2 SATA SSD's in Bay 1 for a 3 x 128GB RAID0. Or upgrade all of them to Crucial M550 - 2 M.2 SATA 512GB and 1 2.5" 512GB. That would be awesome

 

Right, that page show it right.

In the past, Asus had artificially limit the optical bay sata speed from the bios on other models (not ROG), not sure it is the case here, but you can dig around about that.

 

Does the adapter work if it's in the other slot at all? Do both ports still offer a connection at least?

The 3x matched drives would take you to about the limit the connection between the chipset and CPU can manage anyway (around 1.6GB/sec).

 

Meaker, in the JH/JZ the 2 x M.2 SATA host board is a physical mounting, with the other end acting as the SATA III port to the 2nd Bay. It can't be moved, but if it could, it would just be the same arrangement reversed across the bays.

And, yes, the same is true of the 4x mSATA interfaces in other laptops, the motherboard chipset limitation is the same - more capacity but the same 3x SATA III throughput - I think there may be an improvement in transaction throughput at sizes less than would saturate the bus. You can get more small packets that don't add up in size past the throughput threshold, 4x IOPS or tps.

That is likely why the limitation of a single M.2 PCIE in the current chipset - there isn't enough bandwidth to make it worthwhile connecting up another M.2 PCIE device.

 

Yes they will move to using CPU lanes next gen which will help boost output. Hopefully intel will go with more than 16 lanes too (20-24 would be nice). But that does hit pin count hard.