Ocz agility 3 raid 0 trim support

[rytterbomb]

Hello,

I'm thinking of buying 2 or 3 Agility 3 90GB drives for holding software I load up alot i.e. Windows / larger games / photoshop / ACAD etc.
I currently use 2 disks in a RAID 0 configuration, so would like to get the 2 or 3 SSDs setup in this config for speed (I have a NAS that is mirrored for data I do not want to loose before someone tells me how I should RAID 5 it).
The only question I don't seem to be able to find an answer for if if TRIM is now supported on disks in a RAID array or if the Array is still viewed as a single disk that can not be TRIM'd. The garbage cleanup task that can help is according to a few benchmarks, pretty useless. If this is the case still maybe having multiple single disks would work better (AHCI?)? My PC has an Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP Intel P35 (Socket 775) Mobo if that makes any difference to supporting this?

Massive thanks in advance to anyone that can answer this for me,

James R

 

[WyomingKnott]

1) SSDs in a RAID array cannot receive the TRIM command. It's not the fault of the SSD, but the OS and drivers.

2) RAID 0 was advantageous with hard drives. Do not do RAID 0 with SSDs.

First, the main advantage of the SSD is the blazing seek speeds. RAID 0 will not improve that.

Second, a larger SSD in the same series will have better performance than two smaller SSDs in that series in RAID 0. The manufacturer has intensively optimized the performance of the larger drive; just buy a larger drive. That will give you better performance than drives in RAID 0 or multiple independent drives.

May I suggest that you read
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/kigston-hyperx-ssd-raid0_7.html#sect0
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/278576-32-raid
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=32&post=278585&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

 

[rytterbomb]

Thanks for the speedy responce! It's just as I figured from all the research I've done this afternoon. It's a shame as initally the drives in a RAID 0 configuration read and write veryfast but then after a period drop off to useless speeds. Even the rubbish clearing does not speed it back up. It would be nice to have a controller that is able to be accessed to run TRIM on the seperate components of the RAID setup.

I guess for now I'll just get a single larger drive...

 

[WyomingKnott]

Trust me, you will be amazed by the difference from your array of HDDs.

And remember, a single larger drive will perform _better_ than a striping (RAID0) of smaller SSDs. The only place where you might see a theoretical loss would be if you bought the three smaller SSDs and used them as independent drives.

Enjoy. Let us know how it feels when you run on the SSD.

 

[RetiredChief]

Can not add to the excellent advise provided By WyomingKnott on the adv/disadv of raid0 with SSD.

Only reason Im adding my 2 cents is on your chouice of SATA III drives - the Agility IIIs
You are looking for performance. DO NOT be impressed by Manuf High claims for sequencial performance, As this is for Benchmarks using highly compressable data. You you want to checkout performance the best benchmark is OCMark vantage 9You can look at overall, or for the specific applications you use). Only other alternative is to look at AS SSD Benchmark which use data that is not compressable (Not ideal, just closer to real-life).
In the case of the Agility III you will find it's Seqencial performance is no better on a SATA III port as compared to using it on a Sata II port (Sub 300 mb/s) - talk about a let down.

PS I have two 128 gig agility IIIs, also have a pair of Curcial M4's and a Samsung 830.