Hybrid SSD/HDD

Hello,

Im planning on upgrading my current HDDs to Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive and I have a question about it first. So my current set up is a 7200rpm hdd and 5400rpm hdd in Raid 0 (hold the bashing they've been working fine together for almost 6 months now) I want to ditch the raid 0 config and only use the hybrid. The problem is that I don't want to go through the hassle of reinstalling windows, programs, games etc... is there a way to transfer all data to the new drive pull the two old ones, and have windows start with no problems. I suspect a problem with changing the bios from a raid config to a normal setting.

asus g60vx w/ windows 7 ultimate x64

edit: also I could afford 2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591 in a raid 0 config this of course will take a fresh install but i might be willing to "bite the bullet" if the performance gains are worth it

edit again.....so I was checking my computer specs and my laptop only supports sata II so im restricted to the 500gb ones anyway. But if anyone is still interested in answering this question, id be glad to hear the answer.

 

I've used one of these drives before and they're pretty awesome (nothing compared to SSD drives though ). You will definitely need to change your BIOS settings. I recommend using CloneZilla, I've had much luck with it.

 

thank you, misdemeanor

if only SSD prices would drop I would use one

 

I agree.. I use SSD's in my rig and laptop but they're only low-capacity ones since I don't have the cash for bigger ones..

 

Hybrids are definitely a step up from the platters - even a small step up from the 10000 rpm drives in some benchmarking. The thing with the hybrid drives though is that they require time before you really see gains in performance, as they use the solid state memory for cache. Once frequently used programs are stored in said cache, then you'll see some zippy performance.

I don't think you'd see a big performance boost in RAID 0 with those drives, though. You might be better off getting a small capacity SSD for the primary drive, and getting a cheap 500 GB+ HDD for a secondary drive with no RAID. You'd be spending about the same as you would for the two Momentus drives in your second link if you shop around, and you would see a marginal difference in performance!

 

You have sata 2 but it does not mean that you can not put sata 3 drive there.

+1 about small SSD drive + HDD.

Lates IRST lets you enable or disable raid without reinstall.

You can copy hdd using free programs.

 

James I had always though stat 3 was backwards compatible, the only exception being extra extra large capacity drives.

 

SATA III drives are backwards compatible with the SATA II drives. What could be an issue is if advanced format were not supported.............

 

I would wait a bit for the price drop on the 512Gb SSDs.
Or 2x256 in raid 0

 

As TANWare said; SATA III is backwards compatible. James was saying having a SATA II port does not mean you can only use SATA II - that you can use a SATA III port still.

 

thanks for the info everyone, sorry for the late reply.

I ended up getting 2 of the 500g but here's the better part newegg messed up on packaging I'm guessing and sent me 1 500g and 1 750g. Instead of notifying them of the mistake (morals....I know) I decided to try the two together, they're working apparently. But here's something weird, I thought it would throttle down the 750g to 500g space but I have 932g of usable space and IRST claims they are working properly in a Raid0 config.....

 

You are confused. What is half of 932GB? It is using that much from each drive.

 

its combining the two for 900+g, in any other raid 0 config ive done it does not add both drive spaces together but makes one complete volume over 2 discs (320gb x 2 in raid 0 = 320gb not 640gb) the drive space just seems weird to me 750+500 would be somewhere around 1.2tb even with hard drive space not being calculated correctly from the manufacturer it would be over 1tb if it was adding the two together. It should have 500g drive space in a raid 0 config

 

You are confused about RAID 0 and RAID 1. If you were running RAID 1, where the drive is mirrored, you would expect a single 500GB volume. But you are running RAID 0, where the data is not mirrored or duplicated, so the drive space is cumulative. You have exactly the size one would expect from running RAID 0 on two 500GB drives. Everything is fine.

 

Qing Dao is right about the functionality and theory in the different RAID setups, though. Keep in mind that RAID 0 is striping (performance oriented; no data redundancy), while RAID 1 is mirroring (redundancy oriented; data is duplicated).

 

Running RAID 0 requires equal sized volumes on the different disks. So with two disks it will be 2x the smallest disk, regardless of the size of the other. The OP has another 250GB of unpartitioned space on the 750 GB drive.

 

ok this makes more sense, im still new to this. but it's great to have the facts straight, thanks for the quick replys

 

nm should have read further

 

Oh no, I wasn't arguing that point. The phrasing in your previous post lead me to think you thought the OP had two 500 GB drives outside of the array is all.

All is well, in any case.