Sabertooth 990fx SSD raid0 nightmare

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plaugewolf

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Sep 10, 2017
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I guess i'll preface this post by stating I'm completely new to anything RAID related. first time setting up one, first time even looking at one. So far it has been an utter nightmare, mostly because of oversight / ignorance on my part.

Relevant hardware:
Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 Motherboard
AMD 9370FX CPU
32GB HyperX 1866 DDR3 Memory
2x Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD's

Initially i had thought that my onboard sata controller would be enough to handle a single RAID 0 of 2 SSD's. I thought wrong. after spending some 4 hours just convincing windows 10 to install onto the RAID array, i finally got windows to boot, and boy was I excited. This was new ground for me, having never done anything with RAID, so i wanted to play around and test it before getting serious about setting up my windows install, in case something went wrong. Sure am glad i did.

So i copy a 2 GB file from my storage drive onto the desktop and windows 10 locks up, first the mouse stutters on screen, then freezes entirely, then boom, BSOD. i was like huh, that was weird. reboot, and the files on my desktop, albeit corrupt, and short a few hundred MB. So i copy past the file, grin a bit when i see write speeds hit 1.1GB/s and windows locks up again, and... BSOD.

At this point im convinced that its the RAID array causing the problems. any time i copy a "big" file, or even just leave the OS sitting idle for ~20-30 minutes the same thing happens, windows locks up, then BSOD. So i did a bit of reading and came to the conclusion that my onboard sata controller doesn't have the necessary bandwidth to handle a RAID 0 array of dual SSD's.

So i start searching online (amazon, newegg, tiger, etc) for a decent RAID controller thats "affordable". after looking around for a bit i stumbled across a online review type thing, https://nerdtechy.com/best-pcie-raid-controller-cards , which lead me to looking at the Vantec card.

Vantec 4 Channel 6-Port SATA 6 Gb/s PCIe RAID Host Card Model UGT-ST644R with HyperDuo
Model #: UGT-ST644R
Chipset: Marvell 91xx

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EA0WMOS
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815287028

According to the review i read (posted above) the card can handle ~1.2GB/s throughput, due to it using 4 PCIe channels, which would be perfect for what i want right?

Well, now that exposition is done, heres the whole point of my posting here, i guess.

Any advice for someone that fits the context of the above?
Will the Vantec card be enough for me? Should i just suck it up and throw down $200 or so on a beefier RAID controller?
What do, internet, what do...?

Completely aside from all of that, is my supposition even correct? Was i crashing because of a throughput bottleneck with my onboard sata controller?
 
Solution
RealBeast
You could not pay me the $50 cost of that card to waste the time putting it into my main rig. That *might* work adequately for a really cheap HBA (host bus adapter -- basically more SATA ports) in a home brew FreeNAS storage box, although I would go with the much superior IBM M1015 flashed with the appropriate LSI firmware for that purpose.

I would first suggest that you not use RAID on a good pair of SSDs (like those 850 Pros) as you will see no difference in real life only a bump in (mainly sequential) benchmarks.

If after thinking about it **you really just have to do it**, then get a good RAID card that will be reliable as a boot device. Motherboard RAID is poor because any hiccup in the bios can break your array and take out...
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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You could not pay me the $50 cost of that card to waste the time putting it into my main rig. That *might* work adequately for a really cheap HBA (host bus adapter -- basically more SATA ports) in a home brew FreeNAS storage box, although I would go with the much superior IBM M1015 flashed with the appropriate LSI firmware for that purpose.

I would first suggest that you not use RAID on a good pair of SSDs (like those 850 Pros) as you will see no difference in real life only a bump in (mainly sequential) benchmarks.

If after thinking about it **you really just have to do it**, then get a good RAID card that will be reliable as a boot device. Motherboard RAID is poor because any hiccup in the bios can break your array and take out your OS. And the product you listed will be nothing but heartburn.

Before SSDs, I used a 4 disk RAID 0 using 15k drives and an Adaptec controller. Today I would not consider doing it even though I do have a couple big storage boxes with Adaptec 6805 and 8805 controllers, but those are in RAID 5 for large storage purposes.

My first choice would be to do a new build with an NVMe drive, second I would use either Adaptec or LSI from the newer cards, so like an Adaptec 8405 (with the fan cable about $400). So neither option is very appealing financially.

Did you actually just try using them as two distinct drives with AHCI set in the bios? It really does work well and boots very fast -- a good RAID card adds a good 3-5 minutes to the bootup since it has its own firmware that does its thing before allowing Windows access to the array.

And yeah, even with real RAID cards you spend a lot of time talking to tech support for unanticipated issues, such as expanding the number of drives in a RAID 5 array that crosses the 10TB line, so from around 8 to 16TB cannot be done with the GUI software on older Adaptec cards, you need to use the line command window. Funny but a few years ago when I first did it, their tech support was unaware of that issue. But to their credit they worked with me for a couple days and all was well -- just lots of lost time. So if you are doing it to learn, plan to spend a lot of time. ;)

TL;dr Don't do it. If you absolutely must, buy a good (and expensive card).
 
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Solution
Rogue Leader

Rogue Leader

It's a trap!
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Dec 22, 2014
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Whats the goals here, because buying a RAID card to do this is a bad way to waste $50, and buying a $200 RAID card is a REALLY bad way to waste $200.

In daily computing you will see 0 performance benefit. And if you really need speed s 960 EVO M.2 drive is available you could put on a PCIe M.2 card. You probably can't boot from it, but it will give you even better performance as a secondary drive or whatever.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Primary question - What do you use this system for?
Unless you are a video or 3D movie production house, the RAID 0 is worse than useless.

SATA SSD + RAID 0. Read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
NVMe SSD + RAID 0. Even worse: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html


The benchmarks may look GREAT. For large sequential data. Like if you are a 3D movie producer. If that is the case, sure.
And if that were the case, you'd know that you needed it, and how to implement.

For normal use? The vast majority of things that happen in the real world is at tiny 4k blocks. In that world, SSD + RAID 0 does, at best, equal to a single SSD.


Bottom line - You're spending a lot of money and brainpower for simply theoretical benchmark numbers.
 
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