What is best setup config using both ssd and hd?

[rutledj]

I am considering purchasing a SSD drive to use as the main bootup device. My mobo (asus P6X58D-E) has a marvel 9128 controller which appears to not work great for true 6g drives (from what I've found on these forums). It also appears that using the intel ICH controller in raid 0 is much faster than the sata 6g drive alone (even on a good working controller).

So what would be the best configuration if I only have one ssd? Forget raid and put everything on the intel ich controller or foget the ssd and set up the hd in raid 0 configuration?

I'm no raid expert but I assume that in raid you can't have 2 hard drives and one dangling ssd connected?

Thanks,
Rut

 

[WyomingKnott]

Well, you can have two hard drives in RAID and one SSD working on its own. But it's probably not the right solution for you.

There has been a pretty general consensus on the use of SSD and HDD in the same system. We install the OS on the SSD to give snappy startup and application load performance, and large data files on the HDD because we can't afford a 1 TB SSD.

So application load is faster, but processing large files that are limited by the transfer rate continues to be the same speed as before. Games load more quickly, but play at the same frame rate as before.

The "original" guide to this by our own Tecmo34 is here: http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7/552.html . It turned into an article on Tom's here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-tweak,2911.html .

There have been a lot of discussions of some of the points. Pagefile vs. not. Installing some large SW on other drives. Some people even put high-activity scratch files on the SSD, speeding up apps that do a lot of scratch work but wearing out the drive more quickly.

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You should see no difference between the performance of the drive if the controller mode in BIOS is AHCI or RAID, as long as the SSD is run as a single drive. Do not make it part of a RAID set with an HDD; that will negate the performance improvements.

I'm not sure if I've answered your question or not.

 

[tokencode]

Rut I believe you can do exactly what you are looking to do, connect all 3 devices to he RAID contorller and have 2 in a RAID configuration and the SSD standalone. You can then utilize the other controller for any additional SATA devices you might have. One thing to keep min mind though is if you do it this way, I believe you will still need the controller drivers to access the drive even though it is not actually an array disk, it is still utilizing that controller.