Exciting news for all RAID0 fans

at website

intel drivers pour Raid/Sata/Ata/Ahci

new drivers Alpha drivers are available for download.

But the exciting news is from the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 11.5.0.1109 Alpha Version Release Notes

2. This release will not enable the TRIM on RAID0 feature, but it will be added in the next RST 11.5 release. Contact your RST AE representative with questions.

This means, all arguments against RAID0 lacking TRIM support are no longer valid. RAID0 is an upgrade path for SATA II bound computers, if the BIOS of them supports it.
Luckily mine does!

This also indicates: all non TRIM supporting SSDs are E-O-L(End of Life) like the Intel X25-E.

Hey tilleroftheearth, what do you think about this sensational news?

 

alpha drivers from a non-Intel site........

 

You don't have to use them.
But fact is, normally new drivers appear earlier at other websites than Intel ones. period!
It's up to you wait longer!

 

I dont really understand this but it seems I would benefit from this update

 

This is great news!

With a v4 of the Intel SSD Toolbox (and also the others...) and v11.5 or higher of IRST we could finally use the size of SSD (x2 or more) to get the speeds and capacities we want without getting raped (depending on our systems capabilities, of course).

Sensational? This is right up there with the invention of the wheel!

 

Definitely! People should proceed with caution. As noted in the first post, this is an alpha release of the drivers.

 

What arguments were those?


Thanks for the update maximinimaus. I've been looking for the 11.5 driver for a while as the 11.5 OROM has been available for sometime. Note the date for 11.5 is early August so the driver with TRIM RAID0 support enabled is probably out there somewhere.

As for alpha drivers FWIW I've been using 11.0 alpha since August with no ill effects. YMMV

EDIT: I'd give you a +Rep if I could but NBR is complaining about not spreading them around enough, lol.

 

Well currently Raid0 = no TRIM, which can lead to drive performance degradation.

 

Meaker - yes, that is why maximinimaus is posting about this support in the Alpha based driver.

 

Meaker's just responding to Dufus' post.

Well, indeed good news. I'm sure my Vaio with RAIDed SSDs will love it when it's released!

 

In regards to meaker - IC. I thought everyone knew that RAID-0 over SSD (w/ currently released drivers) will cause write amplification problems over time due to lack of TRIM support.

namaiki, you raise a good point - upgrading. Let's say you're currently using RAID-0 over SSDs and then upgrade. The new drivers won't magically empty non-used NAND cells, so what to do about them? Hope the GC finds them?

I guess the best bet would be to install the new drivers, create an image of the volume, SE the RAID volume, and restore the image. Anyone have thoughts about that?

 

Responding to my post! In what way exactly? By telling me the sky is blue?

 

That would be one way to do it.

Assuming that these are supported Intel SSD's, I am sure that the Intel SSD Toolbox will be able to TRIM the non-used nand cells with a manually initiated TRIM.

With all other SSD's, simply writing a sequential file the size of your free space (or, as close to the full free space as possible) and then deleting it will accomplish the same thing.

Afterwards - be sure to leave the system on, but idle so that the drive will actually initiate the TRIM/GC routines for you. For the first time after installing TRIM aware RAID drivers, I would leave the system idle overnight.

Hope this helps.

 

I guess you didn't read my original post carefully.
So once more:

2. This release will not enable the TRIM on RAID0 feature, but it will be added in the next RST 11.5 release. Contact your RST AE representative with questions.

I installed them and I would not recommend them as they are significantly slower in my setup.

But the perspective is exciting.

 

You asked about the issues of not having TRIM commands passed.

Don't be surprised if you get the answer?

 

Let's roll it back a bit...

The "argument" might be whether you would get better performance with a single SSD, or with SSDs in RAID after you take into account the fact that the SSDs will take a performance hit when in RAID as they don't receive TRIM commands.

 

No, I asked what reason could there be for RAID0 not to be able to support TRIM as there was never any technical reason for RAID0 not to be able to support TRIM with the existence of pass through. The question was asked to maximinimaus. You however decided to interpret it differently.

 

Nope. I did read it...

This is in reference to the time when the NEW drivers (11.5?) are officially released and not Alpha or Beta for that matter. I'm not referring to the OLD 11.0.x.x Alpha drivers.


In regards to tiller,

I don't know what Intel market share is like, but let's assume for the posts here we're talking about the entire SSD market at large. There are now a couple of good options in this thread.

 

jclausius,

that is why I put 'With all other SSD's...' in my response.

But for my personal assumptions, Intel SSD's and the Lexar/Crucial M4's are the entire market.


PS. it's funny to see how each of us can be misinterpreted...

 

I understand. Personally, I stay clear of general assumptions.

You never know when the next davepermen is around the corner.

 

I hate raid0 specially software raid0 it doesn't improve performance significantly and if 1 drive fails or the raid fails your boned. Now raid5 on a full blown raid card, now we're talk'n

 

Consider the origins of RAID: To overcome the dynamic limitation of a single spinning disc.

A better question would be, is RAID really necessary when using an SSD?

With greater safety comes greater complexity and greater price.
At some point, the insurance may approach the price of replacing the data entirely.

 

You're also boned when your one spinner disk fails.
Regarding the performance I advice take a look at serious websites like anandtech, ssdreview aso.
Then we can talk again.

 

Raid can have benefits.

If you have one smaller drive you can add another and double your space and share spare area across the drives.

 

Sure, but in a non-redundant raid systems (the setups people use in performance machines like those on this forum), the more disks you have the higher chance for system failure. All it takes for a raid0 array to be completely useless is 1 bad drive. Twice the amount of disks means twice the failure rate.

 

I always have a current working image for a RAID0 setup and also an identical for an AHCI setup. And always a backup of my data on the RAID.
If the RAID fails, I reconfigure my notebook for AHCI, restore the image and my data and I'm back again.

By the way, I never experienced a HDD/SSD crash in the past and I'm in this business since several years.

 

Raid1 is all well and good but what if your machine is stolen? Same for a non raid array.

Run raid0 and have an external backup.

 

Would I be able to use SSDs in Raid 0 on an older Core 2-era motherboard?

Although I think for the usage pattern of the PC in question, a small SSD as a cache device would offer similar performance for a lot less money. Too bad there's no way to do this unless I'm using Z68, and I probably won't need a CPU/Mobo upgrade for a few more years.

 

If the SMB of that machine doesn't support RAID-0 with fake-RAID, as unappealing is this is, you could always try out software based RAID-0.

However, I think using an SSD or Momentus XT as a boot drive while keeping the existing drive for data storage would be a better option.

 

What do you mean my RAID-0 x25-E's are end of life?! They don't support TRIM even with this update?!

Damnit. I was going to snatch up all the X25-E's I could lol. They'll still last me a long time I reckon though

 

Hot news here:

Intel Rapid Storage Technology Roadmap: Windows 8, SSD RAID TRIM and Many More by VR-Zone.com

 

Out of curiosity, did anyone every find / install the 11.5 RST alpha drivers? If so, can you give us a status report?