SSD and HDD Setup

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mjcelli

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Dec 20, 2013
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Hello -- First time poster here. I've read through many posts on this subject but haven't quite found a 'direct' answer to my question so here goes:

I'm doing my first PC build and I bought a 512 gb Samsung Pro SSD and three (3) Seagate 1Tb hybrid HDD's.

Mobo: Asus Maximus VI Hero, Intel Haswell 4770K CPU, Windows 8.1 Home Premium

My setup is this: I set the SSD as the primary (C) bootup drive and data drive. The three hybrid HDD's I setup as one physical drive (RAID 0) mainly to store videos, pictures and misc. data.

To do this I had to set the SATA mode In the BIOS to "RAID" (I get three choices IDE, RAID, AHCI).

My basic question is does setting the Mode to RAID versus AHCI in my case degrade the performance of the SSD which is my primary drive. OR Should I just use the AHCI mode and dump the RAID configuration all together.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions / comments.
Mike C.
 
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MC_K7
Yep RAID0 with SSD is a bad idea unless you're doing heavy video editing. That's the only scenario where I would recommend it.

As others already mentioned RAID 0 in general increases the risk of data loss since you loose 100% of the data even if only 1 disk fails.

If you're using your HDD to store data you would be much better to put them in RAID1 or RAID5 or simply don't use RAID at all (standalone disks).


Here's what I would do if I were you:

1- Use the SSD as a standalone disk for your OS / games / programs.

2- Instead of buying 3 x 1TB HDD (the third one is useless). Buy 2 x 3TB and put them in RAID1 (mirror configuration so you have a live back-up all the time).

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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Stop.

Unless you really, really need to, you don't need the other 3 drives in a RAID config.
Having them as a RAID 0, fail of one drive = losing the whole array.

SSD = C. Other drives as D, E, F.

You can direct movies, music, etc to default to those other drives quite easily.
 
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mad-max79

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Jul 12, 2012
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The current Intel RST driver support TRIM, while using RAID mode. Usually the performance should be the same.
Maybe there could be trouble using magician, but for a possible firmware update it could be possible to create bootable thumb and then switch to AHCI, boot, update firmware and set every back.
 
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MC_K7

MC_K7

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Aug 31, 2008
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Yep RAID0 with SSD is a bad idea unless you're doing heavy video editing. That's the only scenario where I would recommend it.

As others already mentioned RAID 0 in general increases the risk of data loss since you loose 100% of the data even if only 1 disk fails.

If you're using your HDD to store data you would be much better to put them in RAID1 or RAID5 or simply don't use RAID at all (standalone disks).


Here's what I would do if I were you:

1- Use the SSD as a standalone disk for your OS / games / programs.

2- Instead of buying 3 x 1TB HDD (the third one is useless). Buy 2 x 3TB and put them in RAID1 (mirror configuration so you have a live back-up all the time).

 
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mjcelli

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Dec 20, 2013
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Wow, thanks for all the great information !! I think I'll skip the Raid 0 configuration and run the SSD in AHCI mode. I'll mull over the replies above to figure out what to do with the other HDD's.

Thanks again everyone!! This forum is a wonderful resource!!

Mike C.
 
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