replacing 2 hdd with ssd RAID1 DELL Precision win 7

[OAGROOT]

I have 2 HDD SAS 300 GB 15k rpm and wanted to change them for equivalent SSD with the least hassle! I have read http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2103083/replacing-hdd-ssd-raid-setup.html
but I'm not sure if the procedure the asking person suggests is correct or not. Furthermore, I would like to know opinions both pro and con about this change.
This is the workstation I work professionally with, and See great delays in my GIS 3D work. Hard disk is noisy now and I am considering upgrading technology.
my disks are
DISCO DURO : 300GB SAS (15000RPM)
DISCO DURO ADICIONAL : 300GB (15000RPM)
C21 SAS RAID 1 FOR 2 HARD DRIVES

My main questions are:
-IS he mentioned procedure (see link above) correct?
-Will I benefit with this change?
-Is there another combination you would rather go for?
Thanks in advance

 

[DataMedic]

I'd be careful about following the procedure that the other poster suggested. As one of the answers pointed out, you need to be concerned about 4K sector support and alignment. I assume that you're working with Win 7 or newer, otherwise you'll have issues with SSD hard drives???

My suggestion would be to use a tool like Paragon SSD Migration (costs $20) to clone the array onto a single SSD. The tool will adjust the partitioning to properly align the sectors. Not doing this can lead to slow operation and even premature failure. Since RAID 1 is a simple mirror it should have no issue as any one drive can boot the system. After you have an SSD setup and capable of booting the system, simply remove the HDD's and install a second SSD (assuming you still want data redundancy) and then configure it in a RAID 1 config mirrored from the other drive.

You will want to be sure that you have AHCI enabled in your BIOS before you proceed. If it isn't already enabled you'll need to first tweak your registry as described in this article: http://www.data-medics.com/how-to-enable-ahci-after-installing-windows.html and then enable it in BIOS. This will allow for the more advanced features your system will need to take advantage of the SSD.

As for benefits, SSD's are much faster for random IOP's. Meaning they perform much faster for lots of small read/writes of many files (such as booting an OS, loading a program). This is primarily due to the fact that they have virtually no seek time like traditional hard drives. As for sequential read/writes of single large files, they aren't really any faster than a good SAS drive in many cases (except for some of the newer high end SSDs). I don't know what 3D program you're using and how it stores it's data, so I can't really tell you if it'd help or not.

If you really need to increase you're data throughput to boost performance on sequential read/writes, you might consider going to a hardware RAID with both striping and redundancy such as a RAID 5 or RAID 10. It'll take a few extra drives but will likely have the desired effect. Just remember to back up your data with any RAID. RAID is not backup, even RAID 1. Entire arrays are corrupted/fail every day.