Setting up RAID 0 with 4 drives

[JobCreator]

Hello, folks! Long time no see. I was hoping you could help me out. A client of mine has a crazy expensive machine that I'm physically building for him. He has 6x 240GB SSD and 1x 1.0TB HDD. He wants 4 of the SSDs put into RAID 0. One of the SSDs will be a boot drive, and the 6th will simply be free space. The TB obviously is for storage. What would be the best way to go about setting this up? My instincts tell me to connect the 4 RAID drives first, set them up into RAID 0, then add the other drives to begin the Windows installation and so on. Can I connect all the drives first and select which drives I want to RAID from the BIOS? Will having the other drives connected interfere with the RAID setup? Thanks for your help!

 

[Dereck47]

My instincts tell me to connect the 4 RAID drives first, set them up into RAID 0, then add the other drives to begin the Windows installation and so on.

No, you want to do just the opposite. 1st install your O/S on the single SSD with no other drives connected. Your SATA ports should be in RAID mode when you install the O/S. Since the drive is not part of an actual RAID array it will automatically default to AHCI mode.

After the O/S is installed then shut down your system, connect your 4 drives, boot into RAID BIOS, and create your RAID-0 array.

After you've created your RAID array you can then shut down and connect any remaining drives.

 

[JobCreator]

My instincts tell me to connect the 4 RAID drives first, set them up into RAID 0, then add the other drives to begin the Windows installation and so on.

No, you want to do just the opposite. 1st install your O/S on the single SSD with no other drives connected. Your SATA ports should be in RAID mode when you install the O/S. Since the drive is not part of an actual RAID array it will automatically default to AHCI mode.

After the O/S is installed then shut down your system, connect your 4 drives, boot into RAID BIOS, and create your RAID-0 array.

After you've created your RAID array you can then shut down and connect any remaining drives.

Just so I'm sure you're understanding properly, the boot drive is not part of the RAID setup. 4 drives in RAID 0, 1 drive outside of the RAID is for boot, 1 is for free space, terabyte also for storage. Same directions apply? Thank you for the quick response.

 

[Dereck47]

Correct!

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

You did not say what motherboard or controllers you are using

Try to persuade him not to use raid 0
There is no point unless you have something very special that can send data fast enough to feed sata III SSD's in raid 0

You probably need a special or additional raid card to support 2 raid 0 or raid 1 (mirror for safety)
Are you doing this on a PC motherboard or a server with proper built in or add on raid cards?

Usually trim function does not work with raid on SSD's which is a good reason not to put SSD's in raid

Regards
Mike Barnes

 

[JobCreator]

You are the man. Or woman. You're it.

 

[Dereck47]

 

[JobCreator]

Hi

You did not say what motherboard or controllers you are using

Try to persuade him not to use raid 0
There is no point unless you have something very special that can send data fast enough to feed sata III SSD's in raid 0

You probably need a special or additional raid card to support 2 raid 0 or raid 1 (mirror for safety)
Are you doing this on a PC motherboard or a server with proper built in or add on raid cards?

Usually trim function does not work with raid on SSD's which is a good reason not to put SSD's in raid

Regards
Mike Barnes

This guy is using this build for Adobe Creative Suite. He's got the 6 SSDs, 1TB, GTX 780, ASUS X79 Deluxe board, i7-4930k, 32GB RAM, uhhh, 2 card readers, blu ray writer.

 

[Dereck47]

Connect your O/S drive and your "free space" drive to the Intel 6Gb/s ports.
Connect your RAID drives to the Marvell 6Gb/s ports.
Connect your HDD to the Intel 3Gb/s port.
Connect your CD/DVD drive to the Intel 3Gb/s port.

 

[Dereck47]

According to page 5-7 of the ASUS X79-Deluxe motherboard manual the Marvell controller can only create a RAID-0 array of 2 drives. http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2011/X79-Deluxe/E8419_X79-Deluxe.pdf

So if you want a RAID-0 array of 4 drives, then you will have to connect the drives to the Intel 3Gb/s ports, or you will have to purchase a RAID controller card.

 

[JobCreator]

All is good in the neighborhood. I don't think the guy is going to be too pleased about having to RAID those drives on the SATA II ports, but there's not a whole lot he can do about that outside of getting a totally different motherboard. Thanks for your help, humans!