[Solved] How 2 configure ASUS P6T w/lone SSD + SATA RAID?

Do you really want raid-1 or one of it's variants?
The value of raid-1 for protecting data is that you can recover from a hard drive failure quickly.
It is for servers that can't afford any down time.
Recovery from a hard drive failure is just moments.
Fortunately hard drives do not fail often.
Mean time to failure is claimed to be on the order of 1,000,000 hours.(100 years)
Raid-1 does not protect you from other types of losses such as viruses,
software errors,raid controller failure, operator error, or fire...etc.
For that, you need EXTERNAL backup.
If you have external backup, and can afford some recovery time, then you don't need raid-1.

My suggestion is to do the following:
Install the X25-m on the ich10R for the OS and work drive.

Set up a pair of raid-0 disk arrays of two drives each, also on the ich10R.
Raid-0 optimizes the use of these drives for sequential operations.
Try to have the source allocated to one array, and the target to the other. That way, there will be minimal arm stealing delays when transferring data frome one to the other.

If you had all 4 drives as a single array, then there is no telling where the files will be allocated, and any sequential operation will result in much interference.

If you do not need 4 data drives, consider using just two non-raid drives with source on one, and target on the other.

I think your performance will be limited by the mechanical transfer rate of the drives, and not the limitations of a single ich10r chip.

I had been thinking earlier along the line of geofelt 's advice. I believe that's the best way to go here.

Wathman, I never asked about the difference between RAID0+1 and RAID10. In a way it doesn't matter because the P6T onboard controller implements RAID10 as an option (and their literature describes that as same as RAID0+1). Some forums claim their are subtle differences - in theory - between RAID0+1 and RAID10, but I'm not concerned with that because the P6T on-board controller only offers one of those two choices anyway. Wathman I believe you are probably correct about the way to setup the SSD and the RAID in the BIOS. I will try that.

stockstradr, my comment on RAID0+1 and RAID 10 was more to convey that I'm not an expert on RAID arrays, and that I never found a good answer to this question myself, what you just said on the topic is probably as complete of an answer as I'll ever need.

The setup I described should work based on my experience with the older ASUS board I currently use, though I'm wondering if you will run into a performance hit by running both the SSD and 4 disk array off the same controller since it will be transferring data to both "Drives" at the same time. As you stated, your motherboard isn't ideal since it has the secondary JMicron so that's not an option.

I'm using the same Motherboard. I have 3 1.5 TB SATA hard drives and one 100 GB That I might use for the OS.

I'm curious to see how you ultimatley configured your system and how it's running for you.

Here is what I was hoping to do.

100GB HD SATA for the OS
Two internal 1.5 TB HD in Raid 0 to hold all files
One internal 1.5 TB HD to be used as a backup or to make periodic drive images.

I'm still putting things together but it's going pretty quick, so I gotta make some decisions soon.

Stockstradr, thanks. I'll be looking forward to your detailed post. I have a question that I hope it answers: did you set the ssd to non-raid and sata drives to raid array on a different boot into bios or from the os?

I've never dealt with raid...heck, never really built my own pc, but I've upgraded existing ones enough that I thought I was a "know it all" and now here I am asking a million questions.

Watham, your response was absolutely FANTASTIC! I'm ready to roll on the HDs now thanks to everyones help, espcially yours.

I'll now answer my own post to share the solution that worked great.

Remember this solution applies to my system which is ASUS P6T (not the deluxe ver) with i7 920 CPU, configured with OS (and other programs) on the SSD, then a 4X1TB RAID10, OS is Vista 64 bit

I can report the system works GREAT, and disk read/write speed is fantastic on both the SSD and the HDD. Startup is very fast. From a cold boot to Login screen is 45 sec, then from Vista login to Vista running full on takes only another 15 seconds. Apps load incredibly fast off the SSD. Photoshop CS3 used to take several minutes to load from HDD; now it loads from SSD in seconds.

SOLUTION FOR SETUP:

NOTE: with Vista and Windows 7, the setup is easy because those OS allow you to conveniently pause during OS install and load the driver for the ICH10R Intel Matrix Storage Manager AND don't force you to load only from the floppy A drive. IMPORTANT: know that the OS doesn't contain this driver by default. You must load it from the ASUS disks that came with the MoBo, or you can find the driver from the Intel website and put onto a flash stick.

NOTE: If you have XP then I believe that OS forces you to load drivers ONLY from the floppy drive. My advice? If your OS will be XP, I suggest you get a floppy, set that up as your A-drive, using the ASUS setup, from which to load the ICH10R driver. There are other routes but they are complicated.

1) Connect up your SSD to the first of the Intel ICH10R Southbride ports. Connect your SATA HDD's (that will be members of the RAID) to the remaining Southbride ports.

2) The ASUS manual also mentions hooking up optical drive to the Southbride ports. I don't know if there is a performance disadvantage to ignoring that and hooking the optical drive to the JMicron controller.

NOTE: Do not hook up either your SATA RAID HDD matrix, or the SSD, to the JMicron controller ports.

3) Start PC (no OS yet installed) and DEL key into ASUS setup. Under "MAIN" > "Storage Configuration" you should Configure the SATA as RAID. The 1st drive should be the SSD. The 2nd drive should be the Intel RAID, made of the HDD's.

Of course as Wathman mentioned: Under "Hard Drives" make sure the SSD is selected first, and then back out to "Boot Order" and make sure the CD-ROM is first, SSD disk is second. the Intel RAID array shouldn't even show up since it isn't the primary disk.

4) Then after you finished rest of unrelated settings in ASUS setup you save and exit into Post, where you ^I hotkey into the utility called something like "Configure RAID in Intel Matrix Storage Manager"

NOTE: prior to ^I, you should see the post screens find and list ALL the drives you hooked up. If you don't see your PC finding each drive, then something is very wrong with your connections and you need to stop and troubleshoot that.

OK so now you've ^I into "Configure RAID in Intel Matrix Storage Manager" utility, so now use this utility to Create the RAID volume where DISK 0 = SSD = Non-RAID Disk. Then next use this matrix to create a separate array of SATA's to create the RAID array. That is straight-forward; just follow the menus.

Then exit out of that utility. Now you are ready to load the OS

5) Load the OS and pause (it will give you the option during install) so you can load the ICH10R driver from the ASUS disk that came with the MoBo. Then continue installing your OS onto the SSD.

NOTE: remember, you must NOT setup that SSD as a standard drive in the ASUS setup; it has to be listed under the RAID configuration as a "Non-RAID Disk" then you'll install the OS onto that SSD.

6) We'll assume you got your OS loaded onto the SSD and your OS is now running. For Vista, you'll next want to Right-click on "Computer" and select "Manage"

7) This will bring up the "Computer Management" tool window. Now select "Storage" then select "Disk Management"

8) Cross your fingers for luck, you should see this utility displaying BOTH the C-drive which is your SSD containing the OS, and then the RAID array should show up (as a single unformatted drive).

9) Select the "box" shape graphic associated with the RAID array under Disk Management, and right-click on that rectangle shape and select "Format" then format NTFS and accept the defaults. Personally I prefer not to try and split my disks into multiple volumes; keep it simple and make the RAID one big volume.

10) Once you've formatted the RAID matrix it will show up as a disk you can store to. For me the RAID10 (RAID0+1) is working great because it is FAST on read/write plus gives the security of full data redundancy

FINISHED.

Recently I did a 0.5 TB file transfer from my SSD to the RAID10, and the write speed for that x-fer was 200+ MB/s. That's fast! File transfers that are internal to my C-drive, which is the SSD, are even far faster than that.

NOTE: if you install Windows 7, that OS will probably not recognize the ASUS utility apps (from the included ASUS disk) as suitable for installing onto Windows 7. To get around that you need to tell Windows 7 to treat those apps as suitable for Windows 7. There are many forums explain how to do that.

Finally, remember to read the forums on SSD maintenance to maintain your read/write speed. SSD's are NOT like HDD's, so are maintained differently.

I'll give you an example. Let's say that you installed your OS and some programs onto the SSD. Now you decide you configured it wrong so you want to re-install the OS onto the SSD again. So you figure then during that re-install you should allow the OS install to do a full format on the SSD.

That would be wrong (or at least not best practice). What you should do is use a utility like HDDErase 3.3. Youll back up any data from the SSD. Then you'll use HDDErase to SECURE ERASE the entire SSD. Next you'll re-install your OS, and during the OS install DO NOT select full format, but only select quick format. Some would argue you NEVER do a full format to an SSD, because the full format will slow your SSD, and if you are in situation where you can erase everything with a full format, then you'll want instead to use the SECURE ERASE which will refresh your SSD back to its original as-new read/write performance.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?a [...] pert&pid=6

If you are gonna put your OS onto a SSD then learn how to keep it running fast by periodically (like every year, or every six months, not every week!) backup then do a SECURE ERASE command on the SSD then re-install everything. That's why you only put things onto the SSD that are easy to simply re-install (and don't really need backing up)

Besides these days with all the layoffs it is good to keep HDDErase handy. If you get laid off and you have personal stuff on the company laptop, you can just SECURE ERASE your corporate laptop with that before you turn it into HR (as long as you don't also inadvertently erase valuable corporate information on your laptop)

In the post with the solution you chose, you said not to use the JMicron controller.

But... Would you use the JMicron in the case were you want a RAID 0 for the Operating System and RAID 10 for data.

In this case would you set up the RAID 10 Data on the ICHR10 and then use the JMicro for the RAID 0 system drive.

This is for video editing and I want performace and redundancy for the data drive. My assumption is that RAID 10 with 4 drives is better than RAID 5 with 4 drives. If that is not correct, I can do a RAID 5. But in addition, I'd like to get better performace for the system drive by using a RAID0.

The bottom line question: Is it better to have the opperating system on a RAID0 attached to the JMicron or to have the opperating system on a single non-raid attached to the ICHR10?

These would be standard SATA drives (4-Samsung 500GB and 2-WD 500GB)