How to Configure RAID/JBOD on the new VPCZ1 Series with SSD

How to Setup - RAID Volumes

BEFORE CONTINUING WITH THIS POST, BACKUP YOUR DATA AND CREATE RECOVERY DISKS IF YOU DECIDE TO DO THIS!! DID I MENTION MAKING RECOVERY DISKS AND BACKUPS? GOOD!

RAID 0 as defined from this Wikipedia Article

You can get a good visual representation of what the various RAID options look like in this section of the same article.

Lastly, this portion of the article explains the type of RAID functionality provided by Intel in the VPCZ1's firmware/driver-based RAID system, also know as SoftRAID or FakeRAID.

RAID in the new VPCZ1 (Second Generation Z Series)
RAID 0 is the default configuration on all known second generation Sony Z's with SSD's and optical drives. If this sounds like you, no change is necessary if you want to keep RAID 0 or like the volume size. If you want to break the RAID 0 set to JBOD, read on or skip to the next post.

NOTE!!! Some systems sold internationally have traditional hard drives with no optical drive. If this sounds like your configuration, none of this will work. If you put an SSD in your 2nd gen Sony with aftermarket drives from companies like Intel, OCZ, or Samsung, some of this may work but hasn't been tested by me. Hopefully somebody can comment to this.

RAID Controller Setup - Option 1 - Create/rebuild one or more RAID 0 (Stripe) Volume(s)
Choose this option if you want to re-initialize your current RAID 0 volume(s) or create new ones.

!!THIS PROCESS WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON YOUR SSD DRIVE!!

1. Boot into the BIOS using F2, select "Get Default Values"
2. Under the Advanced section, set "RAID Configuration" to "Show"
3. Reboot and select CRTL-I to enter the Intel Option ROM
4. Press "2" to delete a RAID volume
5. Select the RAID volume you want to delete/recreate with the arrow keys. If no Volumes exist, an error will display. "There are no volumes available to delete" Your drives are ready to be joined to a new RAID volume. Press the space bar and continue to step 9
6. Hit Delete key to remove the selected volume
7. Press Y to PERMENANTLY DESTROY THE VOLUME AND ALL DATA
8. Repeat steps 4-7 if you have other RAID volumes you want to remove/recreate
9. Press "1" to create a new volume
10. Name: Type in a name for your new volume or leave the default name. Hit tab to continue.
11. RAID Level: Hit TAB again to move to the next selection (RAID 0 is the only option on my machine)
12. Option 1 - Select Disks: (grey text) If you only have two SSD drives available, they will be automatically selected and you will move to "Strip Size:" Skip to step 13.
13. Option 2 - Select Disks: (white text) If you have three or four drives available, you will be able to select two or more disks. You must select 2 or more to create a RAID 0 volume. Hit tab to continue
14. Strip Size: Use the arrow keys to select your "Strip Size." This is also known as Stripe Size. 128KB is default (see notes). Hit tab to continue.
15. Capacity: Set the size of your RAID volume in GB (see notes). Hit tab to continue
16. Create Volume: Confirm your selections and hit ENTER to save the changes
17. Return to step 4 if you wish to create additional volumes
18. Press "ESC" to exit if you are done
19. Press "Y" to confirm and reboot the system

Notes:
Strip Size - This size will likely be a source of much debate. Stick with the recommended 128KB if you are unsure what size to use. Be advised that you will have to delete the volume, and the data contained on it, to change the size later.

Capacity - This is the size, in gigabytes, of your new RAID Volume. In my testing, I was able to select a number below the full capacity. I chose 50GB for testing as seen in this screenshot. Read on for a massive caveat....



If you stop here, exit the BIOS and run the Windows 7 installer, you will only see the 50GB volume you configured. The extra 69.2GB that was unallocated is left unavailable and can't be used in Windows.

Bad thing is, while logical, that 69.2GB space isn't available when you install or restore Windows. I tried to force it by reinstalling the Sony storage driver and downloaded an older version from Intel. I could not find a way to add a new RAID volume from within windows.



Good news,
When you create a secondary RAID volume in the Intel Option Rom, you can re-present the unallocated space and allow Windows to see it BUT, I was only able to create two volumes. You can give it a name, set the "Strip Size" and that's it. The "RAID Level" is still locked at RAID 0 and the "Capacity" section is greyed-out, forcing you to use whatever is left over. Doesn't look like three volumes is an option with a 2xSSD setup. But then again, why would you?

Lastly, in what has to be a left over from the administratively disabled RAID 1 (mirroring) functionality, there is a new section called "Sync" that is also grey and can't be modified.



Once created, the new volume is available to Windows after a reboot.



Last note on "Capacity," system images taken with Windows Backup do not work on volumes SMALLER than the backup. If you have a 75GB OS and back it up with the system image tool in Windows and set your RAID volume to 70GB, the restore will fail! The Windows 7/Vista tool will not resize the partition. 3rd party tools can succussfully accomplish this. I used Ghost 15 to restore a 119GB image to the 50GB example volume I used in this post. (The Ghost .V2i data file size was 17GB)

 

How to Setup - Independent\JBOD Drives

BEFORE CONTINUING WITH THIS POST, BACKUP YOUR DATA AND CREATE RECOVERY DISKS IF YOU DECIDE TO DO THIS!! DID I MENTION MAKING RECOVERY DISKS AND BACKUPS? GOOD!

The acronym JBOD stands for, litteraly, "Just a Bunch Of Disks." This means that when you configure the internal SSD's in this mode, each of the 2, 3 or 4 drives will function independently

Wikipedia defines JBOD as:

I won't talk to concatenation in this post, but the first bullet point does explain the concept.

RAID Controller Setup - Option 2 - JBOD or independent disk configuration
Choose this option if you want your SSD's to function like multiple drives. For example, the 512GB SSD RAID 0 volume in the VPCZ11FHX/XQ would show up as four seperate 128GB drives when installing Windows or Linux after following these steps.

!!THIS PROCESS MAY DESTROY ALL DATA ON YOUR SSD DRIVE!!

1. Boot into BIOS using F2, select "Get Default Values"
2. Under the Advanced section, set "RAID Configuration" to "Show"
3. Reboot and select CRTL-I to enter the Intel Option ROM
4. Press "2" to delete a RAID volume
5. Select the RAID volume you want to delete with the arrow keys. If no Volumes exist, an error will display. "There are no volumes available to delete" Your drives are already seperated and configured. Press the space bar and continue to step 9
6. Hit Delete key to remove the selected volume
7. Press Y to PERMENANTLY DESTROY THE VOLUME AND ALL DATA
8. Repeat steps 4-7 if you have other RAID volumes you want to remove/recreate
9. Press "ESC" to exit if you are done
10. Press "Y" to confirm and reboot the system

Your Intel Option ROM should look something like this, with "RAID Volumes" saying "None defined."



I was able to restore the test OS build to a single drive with Norton Ghost. Worked perfectly. This means a Sony-build installed on a RAID 0 Volume CAN be copied to a single drive. I have no reason to doubt this wouldn't work for a cleanly install OS as well.

 

Awesome! Great instructions zoinks! +rep

 

New:

If you have data on your JBOD drives, use them to create a RAID 0 Volume in the Intel Option ROM, then delete the volume, the data on the drives is erased.

This probably falls in the "duh, what did you expect" category, but I was able to physically confirm it.

 

Excellent work Zoinks!
I am sure it will be thoroughly appreciated by everyone.
And thank you for making my life less complicated as I was planning to document the process once my Z (signature series) arrives.
But since that one has 4x128GB SSDs you may have to append that new information to your excellent instructions.
Again, Thank you!

EDIT: yes, that's how it works.
Some mod better make this a sticky!!!

 

Awesome zoinks! Thanks... mods please make this a sticky. Zoinks...you can add any revisions to the first post as you find new things

 

Sure thing

 

Multi-booting several operating systems, for example. Especially if they're Microsoft operating systems and have to have their own boot+system partitions that can't be on an extended partition.

 

Agreed. Guess I find 119GB of storage a bit small. Two volumes, sure but three or more gets tiny real quick. Spoiled, I suppose.

 

So Zoinks, did u achieve SSD saturation and performance degradation at all..? If not, does that mean there is some hidden GC goin on in there..?

Also, are we now certain that TRIM cannot be used in JBOD configuration because Windows will not be using the AHCI driver..?

 

Too early to say, but maybe

I'm unaware of a way to definitively say if the TRIM commands make it to the disk. the fsutil method only shows us that the OS is sending them.

 

If the OS is sending them does that mean WIndows' AHCI driver is running, and talking to the Intel RAID controller..?

Or if the disks are non-RAID, would the Intel RAID controller delegate disk IO to the standard ACHI device, thus allowing the TRIM commands to get through..?
(I may very well be talking cr@p here, lol)

 

I totally agree with others here, great instructions, thanks! It will at least save me the trouble of trying it myself.

*But*, my first thought was something in the lines of:

Why isn't this in the manual? Or is it?

 

Ponx,

I've never full understood the storage driver architecture, but I'd be interested in somebody explaining it.

There are tons of drivers used in storage management; Port, Miniport, Virtual Miniport, Filter, Silo and so on. It's getting jumbled somewhere in there, or perhaps in the SoftRAID firmware. I dunno.

McMagnus,

What's a manual? Alternatively, I'd be happy to give Sony my address so they can send me a check

 

Ok Zoinks, no worries... You know a hell of a lot more than I do about this stuff; thanks for your all your efforts so far...

This forum has been quite the educational tool over the past couple of months or so, I'm sure we'll all get the answers we need before long...

 

Great instructions by OP! I have a related question:

I'm planning to get one of the new Z Series laptops (with either 128 or 192 GB) and I also want to put Linux on it for dual-boot. Am I correct that JBOD is the way to go here or can I still stick with RAID 0? I'm asking because the OP mentioned that on Z you can get only 2 volumes which wouldn't work for a Linux+Windows configuration (swap, root and win partitions). On the other hand, is it possible to set up a RAID 0 array using 2 64 GB disks (for Win) and keep the 3rd one separately (on the 192 GB system) for Linux?

 

Instead of dual boot, consider virtualization. The core i5/i7 are awesome at it. You can use VmWare (free versions are available) or Sun VirtualBox (always free) or Microsoft VirtualPC (free as well).

My favorite is VirtualBox (but I started a sort of a debate last time I mentioned that so lets just keep that beween us )

I find it much more convenient and usable than dual boot.

 

Hm, good point, I actually never thought of that. What's your experience when it comes to stability of such a solution? If I'm running Linux under Win and an application crashes, does it affect the main OS?

 

Oscar, please share the 4x64GB drive performance if you can

 

Stability these days is very good. Google virtualization on blade servers and you will see that server farms these give each client their own virtual computer with multiples on one physical computer.

I usu. do Linux under Windows that same way and it works well. I know a few people that run Windows on their Macs with no issues, even big fat cpu hogs like Autocad.

 

First of all, amazing work!

1.So as I understand this, I would use option 1 to restore out-of-the box performance of the SSD's?
And that all of this is a temporary measure unitl Intel releases drivers ta support TRIM in Raid 0 config?

2.Also from the other findings in the other threads, wasn't it difficult for you to get performance decrease? Or was this a benchmark abnormality? Do we have an agreement on this? Did performance decrease? or not?

3.The recovery discs that you should burn, would they be able to undo all of this? even JBOD? Just in case I f things up

 

What I got was 128GBx2. I grabbed the CrystalMarksDisk 2.2 and then ran it three times. Here are the results:





(Well I give up. I tried to edit it to make it a single image but it no workee for me. It just keeps adding url links)

 

Sorry, must have misread some info incorrectly.

They all look in line with what you'd expect. Slightly higher performance for the larger size.

Nice. Enjoy your new machine.

 

It would definitely be interesting to see, if someone gets a 64GBx4, how fast that baby can stream.

 

I am wondering...would 3 x 64GB SSD be faster than 2 x 128GB SSD?

 

So how are you planning to end up configuring your two 128GB drives? You gonna keep em in RAID or JBOD them?

 

So far I see no reason not to just keep them raid. Until someone reports they are seeing pauses on writes, of the type that we were discussing before. I am encouraged that Zoinks hasn't reported any such issues as yet.

 

My only concern with that is when/if the drives do slow down significantly, there is no way for us to restore the performance

 

I just want to be sure that I have not missed any posts on this. At this point is there ANY indication that we will be having an issue along these lines? (I'm asking)

 

No significant slowdowns, at least from the tests that zoinks has done so far .. but then again he's had the laptop for a few days only ..

 

There's always garbage collection.

 

Ok...I'm glad I just found this guide.I'm about to re-create the 4x64GB Raid0 config in my new Vaio Z...I hope all goes good.

 

Are there any advantages to using either the RAID 0 vs. the JBOD configurations?

From my understanding RAID 0 allows for both faster read/write speeds. However, there is no TRIM support for RAID 0, so degradation and slower speeds will come with more use. However, if I were to re-create the RAID 0 configuration every six months or so, would this return the SSDs to optimal speeds again?

So with the introduction of JBOD configuration, would I be able to gain TRIM support on my Vaio Z11? If not, what advantages are there to JBOD? I don't ever plan to dual-boot; I just use VirtualBox + Ubuntu for my own needs. So what is the point of using JBOD?

 

I wrote a summary in this thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=469272

IMO, running the drives in JBOD defeats the purpose of having multiple drives.

 

I followed the JBOD steps in the first post, formatted, installed windows 7 and can't see the other 2 drives.

I have the 384gb version.

 

Show us the output from diskpart.

Steps:

1. Start, run, type CMD
2. diskpart
3. list disk

Should show something like this

Code:

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: ZOINKS-Z1

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          476 GB    75 GB
  Disk 1    Online         3840 MB      0 B

 

I couldn't find a way to copy the text but nothing at all shows up.

Just has the title at the top saying 'My Computer: username"

DISKPART>

and heard my external hdd boot up and thought it was initializing but no text followed after that.

 

Write "list disk" without the quotes and press enter. To copy, right-click, click Mark, select what you want to copy and press enter.

 

oh man i missed that last part haha, can't read right from this killer hangover

all on a freshly formatted win 7 installation. I haven't installed anything but firefox.


However in my computer section it shows 103gb remaining .. geez i didn't realise win 7 takes up so much space. So yea not to sure why it says 0 b free, and the 2 other disks not even showing up in my computer

 

The info in dispart shows the space consumed by the partition. Seeing 0 free is normal.

You have not initialized your other disks. Go into Computer Management and set them up.

 

Alrite, i'm setting up one drive for mp3s and the other drive for photos and movies.


What allocation file size should i use to avoid the longetivity slow down issue these ssd's seem to have?

 

4096, but it won't help with long term performance. No size will.

Check the other thread on SSD results for more info.