Should I RAID 0 my mSATA and SATA III SSD's?

Hey guys,

I have a 64gb mSATA and will soon have a 256gb Samsung 830 SSD. My original plan was to install OS and documents on the 64gb (deleted recovery partition for extra space) and all applications/games on the 256gb (then shove the 1TB slow drive it came with in an external enclosure for some extra storage).

I've only recently started to learn about RAID configurations and was wondering if i would get better performance by putting the 2 SSD's in a RAID 0 configuration. However I'm not sure if this would actually slow my applications installed on the SATA III as that drive is faster than the mSATA...

Any advice? Thanks in advance!

 

I don't think you can do this? TBH I'm not sure why you would bother...? If you get a SATA III SSD for the mSATA slot and install the OS there, it will be just about as fast as you can get. Put a 512GB SATA III SSD in the primary bay and that will also be maxed-out. I would not mess around with RAID settings if there is no clear reason to do so.

 

Yeh kind of what I was thinking just wanted to make sure. Unfortunately I can afford to neither upgrade my msata nor get more than a 256 for the primary bay. Not yet anyway..

 

yeah, my final upgrades to the r2 will be SATA III SSDs for the mSATA slot and primary bay. At that point, the GPU will probably be the bottleneck. My 64GB has ~20GB remaining after installing my critical apps (no games). I have seen reports of mSATA SSDs causing BSODs when they run out of space, so I'm going to avoid stuffing it too full.

 

I don't think its recommended to RAID different size drives made and/or by different manufacturers. I could easily be wrong about this though, just going off of what I remember from memory.

 

I read that while it's not optimal it's still possible. But yeh I think I'll just be leaving it as is

 

alright just making sure you knew what you were getting into.

 

You probably also cannot RAID drives that are of different form factors. If the msata port is actually just a modified sata port on the same controller as the other sata port it may be possible. But RAID 0 is definitely a no go; when putting two drives of different size into RAID 0 or 1 the size of the RAID drive will be based on the smaller of the two drives. So a 64 and 256 in RAID 0 would give you one drive with 128 gigs (64 times 2 in RAID 0) RAID 1 would give you one 64 gig drive. If this is possible on the different form factors you may be able to set up the rest of the 256 drive as it's own drive. So theoretically you could end up with a 128 gig RAID 0 drive and 196 gig drive that isn't in RAID. Which depending on what you want to do could actually be better than what you have. Although I doubt it is possible because of the different form factors. SSD are not something I have a lot of experience so I don't know how the TRIM and all that would work in RAID. Depending on the speed of your two current drives RAID may not speed them up much anyway. Something you could look into which I have no idea about is trying to make a span type array where the two disks are put together to look like 1 320 gig drive. That would again depend on the controller, but you could explore if it is an option.

 

Ok wow that sounds way too complex for me. I think I'll just leave it as is. Thanks for all the informative answers +rep

 

going to do it myself as soon as the Mushkin Atlas 120's are back in at newegg. I would not have the performance gap of the drives in posted. got a Corsair ForceGT 120 without a home and both are sandforce syncro ram based with very close rated performance around 525/555 80k. I have a Force GT 240 in there now I was planning on raiding with an Atlas 240 but it locks up about once a day and that would jack up raid 0 real quick.
also had a pair of non GT force 3's with one in a caddy and raid let me make an array but it locked up installing windows
Id be super happy if i can get over 1Gb R/W's

 

Not sure if your going to get that type of speed. If the M14x r2 uses the same controller for mSATA as the M17x r4 (which I think it does), the mSATA slot is limited to SATA II.

 

I currently have my Patriot Wildfire 240GB, in a RAID0 with my 64GB Intel X25-E.

So the raid0 partition size is 119.x GB in size, which means I'm using only 59GB of my 240GB drive.

Whilst on some previous controllers, I could 'recover' this spare area, (make a partition, and use it in a non-raid sense), I'm yet unable to do so on this M18x R2 chipset.

I'll probably get another 240GB disk, and put my backed-up partition on a 480GB RAID0 volume.

My 2c.

EDIT: but what I really wanted to say - it works wonderfully.

 

What about purchasing a Crucial M4 256GB mSata SSD and a Crucial M4 256GB SSD and pairing them two in a Raid form. Would that be possible?

Edit: I meant this one here http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?imodule=CT256M4SSD3

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

For what it's worth, I had a MSI GT683 with two 256 GB Samsung 830 running in RAID 0 and it honestly didn't make much difference to me at all outside of benchmark. It's a cool experiment, but IMO a waste of money.

 

To follow up - It looks like Dell sells a RAID 0 2x256GB config for the m14x r2. I wonder if they use equivalent SSDs, ie both Samsung SATAIII...? So you could do it if you wanted to buy two SSDs (one in each form factor) and then figure out how to set up RAID. Still seems like a potential time sink to me.

 

For those interested this is my first run with a Corsair Force GT in RAID0 with a Mushkin Atlas. both are 120GB. for this config I did 128k stripes and only configured 200GB for the RAID thinking back to hearing this was a good idea when TRIM cant do its job due to RAID. Im going to redo it tonight with the full capacity being that I do a clean rebuild every few weeks for one reason or anther.

looks like my writes just break 1,000 with reads peaking around 630. I would have liked to see the R/W numbers switched or at least a higher read as by my math Im only getting an added 100Mb over the single Corsair. maybe I can get the numbers up with a different stripe size or using the full drive.


also for those interested, I looked at the wack RAID setup dell offers, sataII.
bout to wipe it again now so ill let anyone interested know what happens.

 

But remember that Crucial wensite clearly states Crucial M4 256GB mSata is not compatible with M14XR2.

 

I did some more testing with Write Back Cache Enabled and now hit 70MB write 80MB read on the .5k test in ATTO.
View attachment 80929
speeds seem to double as the test file size does and are starting to max out on the 8k test around 950 write 620 read. that slowly increases to around 1GB write and 675MB read. Im pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

I've actually seen several people who have confirmed that the msata is running at Sata III... Can't recall where now, though.

 

I've also seen other people who have used the M4s these and they seem to work...

 

I can personally confirm that my Samsung SSD PM830 mSATA 64GB is running in SATA 3 mode.

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I will be picking up a M14x R2 next month and I've been looking at possibly going with a RAID 0 setup. I think, though, that the performance degradation over time due to the lack of TRIM isn't worth it right now... I'm going to go with a single drive and wait until manufacturers start supporting TRIM in RAID. I know Intel is already working on it...

 

Thanks! Yeah, I think I'll get a 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 as I've read good things (and the sustained R/W both over 500 MB/s) and maybe grab a small SSD for the msata and use it as either a backup or as a hidden drive...

 

Looks like you need to install Intel RST software and enable the write-back cache.

I'm planning to RAID0 my laptop as well with MSATA drives. It's totally fine as long as they are the same models. You might get weird gremlins if you use different models.

 

The Intel 7xx chipset supports TRIM in RAID 0.

There are several threads in the Alienware and M17x forums about people confirming this.

 

for anyone interested, I think I had a bad drive with the atlas 120. I have since got an atlas 240 which I have in RAID0 with a Corsair Force GS 240. my speeds with iRST 11.7 w/WBC enabled break 1000 in ATTO. the small file size speeds are pretty sick as well. I have also just tried RAID0 with 3 drives, 1 of them on the optical port running @ sata2 speeds. it worked and gave me the capacity, but speeds dropped to around 800 max. I figured it might be worth it if the small file size speeds increased but it slowed things along the whole range.

 

I can't believe I had never seen that option :O

+1

 

thanks for giving back the tip I gave you in the mSATA thread you started, rofl. sorry, I just had to. I guess that info belongs in this thread too, just felt like razzin you.