Setting up a RAID 1+0, do I need a raid card?

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And1129

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Hi all, first post here. RAID setups seems to be a popular topic, but still can't find good info despite having been researching this for a while.

I've got a Gigabyte x99 Gaming G1 wifi motherboard, and i've currently got three drives in it. I've got two 2TB HDDs in RAID 1 where I store most of my media, most games, and any important stuff. Then I have an Intel 730 ssd (240GB) which is my boot drive and also holds a few of my newer games (at a time) and programs that benefit from the ssd speed. I'm happy with the speed, and price of the 730, but I'm finding myself needing a bit more space on my C drive especially with these newer games getting larger and larger. I just picked up another 730, so now i'm wanting to add it to my system in raid 0 with my current one, so I would then have RAID 0+1 in my system with the OS on the ssd raid 0. I'm primarily doing this for more fast space, but there are a lot of articles (http://www.technologyx.com/featured/intel-ssd-730-series-2x480gb-review/) and youtube videos out there which suggest two of these ssds in raid 0 really do improve their performance. I'm not sure if my motherboard supports the two different raid volumes at once? It is a newer system, but the mobo manual doesn't say anything about two RAID volumes at once, so i'm not sure if it's possible with my mobo alone. A friend suggested I look into a RAID controller card to set this up, so now i'm wondering if that's necessary and prudent or not. I looked at a few, and all the ones I found seemed to be older and not designed for SSDs. I'm not sure if this set up will draw a bunch more processing power or not. So can I do this? Will I need to find a good raid card before I can do this? Is this a good idea? Should this be pretty straightforward to set up in the gigabyte bios? Could someone show me a type of raid card that would work well for this if i would need one?

Thanks in advance for any light you can provide me on this subject.
 
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drtweak
^^^ Don't forget popatim its is a RAID 10 which means half the space is gone so it is really 480GB ;-)

And yea it looks like you just got RAID 0+1 Mixed up and having a RAID 1 and another RAID 0 The + signs are usually set so that it is a combo of two raids together to make one big one (Things like RAID 5+0 6+0 1+0 0+1 are the same as RAID 50 60 10 01) as Boogieman showed you there but what is also showed you was a RAID 10 and not a RAID 01 which is backwards (It is a RAID 1 of two RAID 0's and not a RAID 0 or two RAID 1's) but in your case yes you can have your RAID 1 and then get another 730 and RAID 0 that with your other 730.

Also as popatim said it will most likely wipe everything. Best thing to do I think, when you are read to...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Hey there, And1129.

There is RAID 1+0 (RAID 10 configuration) which your motherboard supports and it looks like this:
fEdkddn.png

This is basically 2 RAID 1 configurations which gives you a lot of redundancy, which are in a RAID 0 configuration, which gives you more speed.
On the other hand if you want a separate RAID 1 and RAID 0 configuration for whatever reason you may have, you'd need a second RAID controller card. However, in my opinion this is not a good idea. The SSDs are quite fast and you won't get as much benefit as you think you would in real life and the booting time might even be a bit slower. Another reason for you not to do that is that you can't just add a second SSD and setup RAID 0. When you setup a RAID configuration, this always reformats the drives and thus you won't have your OS and data. Unfortunately It's not like you add a 2nd SSD and its storage capacity is just added to the first one without reformatting both drives.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
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And1129

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Thanks for the thoughts Boogieman_WD,

You bring up some good points to consider.
I hadn't considered a RAID 10 array because isn't it seen by the computer as a single drive? I thought in a RAID 10 you were still limited to the size of the smallest disk, so with only a 240GB SSD that would kill my two 2TB drives. Unless i'm mistaken? Also, that doesn't solve my storage issue. But, from what you're saying, perhaps it would be better for me to simply upgrade to a higher capacity ssd? I was also wondering if i would need to reformat while installing a RAID 0, so thanks for the heads up on that. Shouldn't I be able to back everything up, install a raid card and set up the RAID 1+0 on it, and then reinstall the OS and other data to that RAID0 array?
 
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popatim

popatim

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A raid 10 would indeed use the smallest drive to make the final raid so you would end up with (4x240) 960gb of space.

You were correct that using two raids is the proper way to proceed and your motherbd will certainly support 2 raids arrays thru the chipset (I've got 3 on mine), just remember that going from a single drive to a raid normally means formatting the single drive thus losing everything on it but intel has a migration utility to go from a single drive to a 2drive raid0. I've never tried it on a boot disk thou so I'm positive it will work. The key is to make sure the drive is listed as ready ready in the raid bios or RST software; then you can use iRST for the migration.

As always be sure to have backed up first.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-020674.htm
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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^^^ Don't forget popatim its is a RAID 10 which means half the space is gone so it is really 480GB ;-)

And yea it looks like you just got RAID 0+1 Mixed up and having a RAID 1 and another RAID 0 The + signs are usually set so that it is a combo of two raids together to make one big one (Things like RAID 5+0 6+0 1+0 0+1 are the same as RAID 50 60 10 01) as Boogieman showed you there but what is also showed you was a RAID 10 and not a RAID 01 which is backwards (It is a RAID 1 of two RAID 0's and not a RAID 0 or two RAID 1's) but in your case yes you can have your RAID 1 and then get another 730 and RAID 0 that with your other 730.

Also as popatim said it will most likely wipe everything. Best thing to do I think, when you are read to make the RAID 0, download and install Macrium Refelect. Make the Rescue disk when you first run the program. Then make an Image of your OS drive and save it to your RAID 1 of your 2 2TB drives. Then turn off your PC, make your RAID 0, let it wipe the drives, boot from the Rescue Disk, and then restore the image you made and saved to your RAID 1 to your new 480GB RAID 0 (May have to extend the partition since it only copies back what was made which is easy to extend either now or after you boot into windows).

Then you are good to go.

The other option is to buy a 500GB SSD, just clone it to that one and remove the 730 altogether. You won't get a HUGE speed increase on the RAID 0, nothing worth noticing unless you are transfering files to and from the RAID 0 SSD to lets say another RAID 0 of SSD's that can push that much speed. Usually for SSD's a RAID 0 with two drives you get some speed increase. Add a 3 and not so much. Usually after the 4th you see very little, But i have seen videos of people who have 24 or so SSD's one 3 different RAID Controllers, each set of 8 is one RAID 0 and then they do a Software RAID 5. They were getting over 5 GIGABYTES a second read and write on that thing.
 
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And1129

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Thanks guys. I'm glad you think that it will work with my motherboard alone; a raid card would definitely be another complication and I don't think the two RAIDs will draw much processing power... I'll try it by just adding the new drive and setting up a raid 0 with the new ssd. I thought i understood raid nomenclature, but wow it gets complicated! I want a raid 0 AND my raid 1. I'm a bit new to computer hardware tinkering, but I think i can manage this. I'll back up everything, a couple times, before i start.
 
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