Need advice on Raid 1+0 with 4 hard drives with SSD Cache (Intel Smart Response Technology)

Chido42

Honorable
Feb 5, 2014
2
0
10,510
Hello,

I am actually considering upgrading my existing installation to go with 4 2TB hard drive in Raid 1+0 for better performance and redundancy. And to have even better performance I would like to use my SSD to cache this with Intel Smart Response Technology.

Do you think it is possible to do so ? Once I will have installed the RAID 10 on my system does Intel SRT consider it as a classique HDD and then the configuration will be a classic one ?

And do you think it is the best solution to optimize the overall performance of my system ?

Thanks
 
Solution
There are 3 ways to create a RAID array:

Software RAID: The array is created with Windows software
Firmware RAID: The array is created with your motherboard's BIOS
Hardware RAID: The array is created with card that plugs into a PCIe slot on your motherboard

Windows does not support RAID-10.
You'll have to look at the specs of your motherboard to see if it supports RAID-10. If it doesn't then you'll have to buy a RAID card that supports it.

Highly unlikely that you can use a SSD to cache a RAID-10 array, but it's pretty easy to find out.
Start SRT, if your RAID-10 array is listed under "Select the disk or volume to accelerate" then you are good-to-go...
There are 3 ways to create a RAID array:

Software RAID: The array is created with Windows software
Firmware RAID: The array is created with your motherboard's BIOS
Hardware RAID: The array is created with card that plugs into a PCIe slot on your motherboard

Windows does not support RAID-10.
You'll have to look at the specs of your motherboard to see if it supports RAID-10. If it doesn't then you'll have to buy a RAID card that supports it.

Highly unlikely that you can use a SSD to cache a RAID-10 array, but it's pretty easy to find out.
Start SRT, if your RAID-10 array is listed under "Select the disk or volume to accelerate" then you are good-to-go. http://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/intel_smart_response_technology_user_guide.pdf
 
Solution

Chido42

Honorable
Feb 5, 2014
2
0
10,510
Thanks for the answer the fact that it works on raid 0 is a good point. I think my motherboard should be able to handle it GA-Z68AP-D3 it seems she allow raid 10. So if i'm able to boot my raid 10 array on windows it should work. Thanks for the answer I may have been a bit hasty for closing the subject. I will try to put this in place with 4 WD Red Desktop WD20EFRX 2 TB and my current vertex 3 ssd. I will keep you posted if i'm successful in the configuration (I didn't buy the hard drives yet). Do you think these hard drive are the best I can get for this type of use ? (mainly playing and stocking media files)