Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 1.0) & SSD + RAID setups

[Mpegger]

Sometime in the coming months, I will be redoing my system with a SSD as the boot/OS drive and have been reading up on this for the board. I've come across various posts about problems using a SSD + RAID configuration, but many are not that clear on exactly what their setup is. Maybe some of you fellow GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 1.0) users with experience with this can give me some info on your setups.

Planned hardware:

1 x Crucial M4 SSD 256GiB
2 x WD Black 640GB drive in RAID 5 setup
2 x Optical drives (1 SATA, 1 IDE)
2 x extra SATA drives
All ports in AHCI/RAID (XHD in this case) mode

Now the M4 SSD is a SATA3 drive, so I had planned on using it on the Marvell port, which supports SATA3 (all other ports are SATA2). I was going to use 3 640GB drives on the Intel ports in Raid 5 mode, and the 3 other SATA devices on whatever ports were available (the 2 SATA drives on the remaining Intel ports, and the Optical drive on the Gigabyte port).

However, as I was looking up how to boot from the Marvell ports, that's when I started reading about the trouble the motherboard has with RAID and SSDs. Mainly it seems that if you have a SSD on the Marvel ports, and try to have a RAID of any kind on the Intel or Gigabyte ports, all kinds of problems pop up (blue screens, cannot install Windows, lock-ups, dropped drives from RAID, etc). It got even more confusing when I read other posts, that stated they had the same problem even when just trying to use a SSD on any port with an additional RAID setup, or even just trying to add on a SSD along side regular HDD. Some "solution" on how to fix the problem were setting up the RAID on ports 0-1 on the Intel, and the SSD on port 2 of the Intel was a common one, but there were plenty of other "solutions" as well. But so far, none involved the type of setup that I planned, and for many of the solutions, it would also mean installing a SATA3 capable SSD on a SATA2 port.

I'll of course be updating to the latest Bios (F8a is the current one on the US Gigabyte site), but before going through the headaches of trying to get things to work, I'd like some feedback on what so far is working for you GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 1.0) users. If I need to get a different board, it'll be a PITA to have to fork over more money, but I did plan this update to my system to help hold it over for another 2 years or so before a total system makeover.

[edit] I may just stick with 2x 640GB drives in a RAID0 setup (already have those drives). The only reason I wanted the RAID5 was for the performance and redundancy, but I do daily backup with my WHS. [/edit]

[edit2] Just 2 640Gb in RAID0. I didn't even know WD stopped making the 640GB drives. [/edit]

 

[hokiealumnus]

It makes some sense that there would be troubles with a RAID array across two controllers but it shouldn't make a difference with a standalone boot drive on one controller, then the RAID array on another. If you've already got the drives on the way it wouldn't hurt to try (though be prepared to restore a backup), but if there are a lot of people with that issue there might be something to it.

You may want to just keep your spare / optical drives on the Marvell controller and keep your OS & array on the Intel controller. Sucks you'll be stuck at SATA II speeds, but considering you're going from a HDD setup to an SSD for the first time, you're looking at a massive speedup anyway. No doubt you'll be happy. Sure you might lose a few seconds at bootup or loading massive programs but that's about it.

 

[Mpegger]

It makes some sense that there would be troubles with a RAID array across two controllers but it shouldn't make a difference with a standalone boot drive on one controller, then the RAID array on another. If you've already got the drives on the way it wouldn't hurt to try (though be prepared to restore a backup), but if there are a lot of people with that issue there might be something to it.

You may want to just keep your spare / optical drives on the Marvell controller and keep your OS & array on the Intel controller. Sucks you'll be stuck at SATA II speeds, but considering you're going from a HDD setup to an SSD for the first time, you're looking at a massive speedup anyway. No doubt you'll be happy. Sure you might lose a few seconds at bootup or loading massive programs but that's about it.

You read it wrong. The problem wasn't with a Raid on two different controllers. The problem was a Raid on any of the other 3 controllers, along with a SSD on the Marvell controller.

After doing some more digging through numerous other postings though, it seems the problems mainly stem from using the Marvell controller/ports for any SATA device. Although the Intel ICH10R is only SATA2, which would limit the max transfer speed of the Crucial M4 SSD, it would still be a much safer, and still fairly fast option (4K reads are much better on the Intel then the Marvell).

So it looks like I'll be keeping all the drives on the ICH10R, the 2 optical drives on the Gigabyte controller, and still have at least 1 port on the Intel, and the 2 JMicron eSATA ports available for future expansion needs.