SSD's, RAID 0, and Dual boot

So I'm looking at getting two 60GB OCZ Agility 3's. I'm seeing a high failure rate on Newegg but I figure if I whip out the Ultimate boot disk and beat the hell out of them for the first week and see what happens then I should know if I can trust them or RMA them.

Any way I'm tempted by a $120 each price tag and the fact that RAID 0 will give me 1GB/s read speeds!!

My issue is I'm in Linux 90+% of the time. Occasionally I play some games and keep Windows XP around to dual boot with. I feel it would be a shame to not use these for when I do game. Now I'm planning on making two partitions on each SSD (30GB's each) then using LVM (Linux Volume Manager) to create a logical RAID 0 array for the OS across the two drives. Using LVM will let me take advantage of Trim rather than using Linux soft RAID which won't, and Linux won't take over both of the drives, just the partitions I set.

So after that I now have two empty 30GB partitions for Windows. This is where my Windows knowledge jumps off a cliff. Does WinXP support Trim? Can I create a RAID 0 array out of just partitions without it blowing away my Linux partitions? Or on the flip side is there a volume manager I can use in the same way I'm going to use in Linux? I really would prefer to not buy Windows 7 just for Trim support. But on the flip side will Win 7 let me do any of the RAID configurations above and can I keep my Linux boot loader, GRUB2, on drive without messing up the RAID configuration.

PS: RAID through the BIOS is not an option, if my board goes down I don't want it taking my data with it. If the drives fail that is one thing but I don't want compounded issues. I also do have a RAID 5 array for the important stuff.

Creating two arrays in two different operating systems is going to be a nightmare to setup and maintain. Not to mention, a complete mess if one goes wrong. The only way you will be able to do this if you used software RAID in both operating systems, which XP does not have.

You are making this more difficult than it needs to be. A much easier method of doing this is to just let each operating system have their own drive. The only benefit you will have running these in RAID 0 is an increased sequential read/write speed, which you probably won't even notice.

Or just use MoBo RAID-0 and forego trim. Trim is nice and all, but not THAT nice (not enough of a plus to justify the setup you are pondering IMO).

Use MoBo RAID-0, setup everything how you want it, and Ghost/Image the array to a spare HD. If you feel the need to "Trim" the drives - update the image, break the array, pop them into a system that supports trim or secure erase them, and blast the image back onto the fresh RAID array.

You should be backing up any data - and more so with a RAID-0 setup - so this isn't really much more work than simply keeping your RAID-0 backed-up (breaking the array and blasting the image back on might take 20-30 minutes a few times a year).

So sounds like I'm out of luck on the Windows side. Is there any version of Windows with a built in volume manager?

RAID through the BIOS is a no go for me in Linux. The drivers for my board might be supported but last time I looked into that it was a PITA to setup, bad support, and worse performance over the easier to setup soft RAID and LVM options.

I'll dig through the manual for my board and see if I can create RAID 0 in the BIOS for the first half of the drives and non RAIDed unpartitioned space for the other half.

Or just use MoBo RAID-0 and forego trim. Trim is nice and all, but not THAT nice (not enough of a plus to justify the setup you are pondering IMO).

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I rarely buy parts for my computer. If I'm going to drop $240 on anything for it, then it better damn well be performing

You should be backing up any data - and more so with a RAID-0 setup - so this isn't really much more work than simply keeping your RAID-0 backed-up (breaking the array and blasting the image back on might take 20-30 minutes a few times a year).

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Where I work I deal with RAID and many situations of data loss. Nothing I can't get back will be on RAID 0.

Windows 7 offers striped volumes. It is also the only Windows that offers TRIM. How well it works with GRUB2, I have no idea.

Looks like I can make volumes in Windows XP but I need to set the drives as Dynamic disks. This has a different partition table than the old style DOS partitions that everything including Linux uses. Linux does have support for this but I don't like how it will work. The Windows installer can't understand this partition type and unless the documentation I've been looking at is old, neither can GRUB.

I think I'm going to end up giving Windows my current 160GB drive and using the other half's of the SSD's, no RAID, for the current games I'm playing. Linux, being not as picky, will get the RAID 0. I really wish Windows could play nice for once and not take over the whole drive and stay confined to the partitions.