Kingston 40GB SSDs in RAID 0 Question

[igluck]

I was lucky enough to be able to pick up a couple of the 40GB kingston SSDs. I'm presently running them in a RAID 0 configuration on an older NVIDIA 680i motherboard. I've installed Windows 7 and a few games. I've also got a 150GB Raptor and a 500GB WD Caviar in the system for apps and files. My main storage is a 4.5 TB Windows Home Server. Very impressed with the benchmarked and subjective speeds that I'm seeing. In particular, I've never seen Flight Simulator X run as smoothly as in this config.

My main use of the system is web surfing and gaming.

My main question is how to properly maintain these drives over time? It's unlikely that I'll have access to Windows 7 TRIM anytime soon because of some combintation of the Kingston drive, the limited BIOS options of my mobo, and the RAID configuration.

How much of a problem is this likely to be with these Intel G2 drives? Is there anything I can or should do in the meantime to keep them running as well as they are now?

I've been researching the issue all morning and can't seem to find any definitive advice.

Thanks.

 

[gwar2288]

Why do you need them in raid 0?

Seriously, why?

 

[jason4207]

Why do you need them in raid 0?

Seriously, why?

Why not? This is OCF. The faster the better whether you need it all the time or not.

40GB is not a lot to work with. 80GB for OS gives you more breathing room.

 

[tuskenraider]

I've posted this in another thread.....Give this a try as it should work with any SSD. You can download a trial of PD10 to see if it works for you.

 

[igluck]

Why do you need them in raid 0?

Seriously, why?

The drives have a pretty slow write speed that is improved considerably in RAID. Also as noted above it's easier to deal with the limited space issues. Finally, I back all the drives up to the home server nightly so data loss isn't a huge concern and there isn't anything but the system and a few games on it anyhow.

 

[igluck]

I've posted this in another thread.....Give this a try as it should work with any SSD. You can download a trial of PD10 to see if it works for you.

Thanks. Do you happen to know if the Freespacecleaner AS-Clean works with the Intel based drives?

 

[tuskenraider]

Thanks. Do you happen to know if the Freespacecleaner AS-Clean works with the Intel based drives?

Sure will, it's not a drive specific tool.

 

[tachi1247]

Why do you need them in raid 0?

Seriously, why?

why not raid 0 them? ssd drives are one of the most reliable storage options out there. there are no moving parts to fail and as long as you do a back-up occasionally there is no worry....

 

[TheGame240]

Why do you need them in raid 0?

Seriously, why?

While these drives may have an Intel controller and all the advantages that comes with it, they also have half the channels disabled. That translates to a rather unimpressive 40MB/s sequential write speed. RAID 0 alleviates that deficiency. Also, these drives perform better with more free space. By putting the drives in a RAID array, there's no need to manually manage application location to balance disk usage. The only real pitfall is that TRIM isn't yet supported in RAID (as far as I know), but a couple of hard drive utilities have adjusted their algorithms to perform that task on any SSD.

 

[deathman20]

Why do you need them in raid 0?

Seriously, why?

Do you have a Raid setup? If not then you might not understand why we do it.

SSD's in this case, main reason to do it, it to increase Read/Write speeds. Its the biggest bottleneck in a system these days and while true it doesn't help to have SSD's in Raid that much more then just a single drive itself for loading times.

But... having a high read speed, improve write speeds on the drive and having 2 drives its easier to do more things with them in the future if need be. Like taking a drive out and putting it in another system if you want a performance boost.

I personally love my 160Meg Writes (lower then my old HDD setup on the front half of the drive) and high 400Meg Reads. And really why not? You got a 4Ghz i5, why would you want to do that? More speed of course, hence why we use Raid0.

 

[Evilsizer]

if you havent read this article yet, please do... is a intel M G2 drive!
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1139/1/