SSD with RAID backup drive

[Carl2]

I've got an Intel 160Gb gen 2 SSD, I installed Win 7. The drive boots quicker, the Performance index is 7.8. Downloaded and installed the Intel toolbox. I have the Standard AHCI controller with msahci.sys and three other drivers, this will not access the raided volume. Installing the Intel controller allows the SSD to boot under AHCI and the raided drive can be accessed. The intel controller uses the iaStor.sys as a driver.
Not sure about this and correct me if I am wrong, Win 7 uses a trim built in windows when reading and writing to the drive, it must have the msahci.sys to work. If I use the Intel Controller with iaStor.sys I loose the trim. I've already tried the Intel and still get the 7.8 performance index. Not sure if I'm hurting anything so I switched back.
I was hoping to use two controllers, one for the SSD and one for the raid, they all seem to go to the same controller. Also thinking of a raid card.
Carl2

[mlee49]

What motherboard are you using? Also filling out your system specs in your Control Panel will help in the future.

[Carl2]

The computer is a Gateway FX6801, Intel® Core™ i7-950, Memory 9GB DDR3, Hard Drive 1TB SATA, Video NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 285, Motherboard Systemboard with Intel® X58 Chipset.
Quick little thing but the 1 min 40 sec boot time annoyed me, my frist try at trying to reduce this was to try raid 0. I found some HD502HJ Samsung sata 500G 16Mb at a reasonable price after looking at tomshardware. I used the Intel matrix storage to create a volume and used an image of the original hard drive for an OS. The drives worked very good, read 270 Mb, writes 230 Mb, but the boot time remained the same.
Next I went to the Intel 160g SSD, upgraded the firmware, cloned the original hd to the ssd. I still got the 1 min 40 sec boot time, performance index of 5.9. the toolbox would not install to the ssd. The cloning software also put a partition of the MBR on the SSD, about 10.5 gb. While working with drivers and controllers I got a not a genuine windows install and windows would not load. Since Win 7 arrived I did a clean install of Win 7 after formatting and reducing the partition to 100 mb so I get a performance index of 7.8 and a boot time of 40 sec.
The computer originaly came with Vista and is upgraded to Win 7. I have the Gateway Vista OS, Vista drivers, Win 7 OS and Win 7 driver disks. Purchased an installed MS win 7 on the ssd.
Carl

[Thrackan]

Originally Posted by Carl2

The computer is a Gateway FX6801, Intel® Core™ i7-950, Memory 9GB DDR3, Hard Drive 1TB SATA, Video NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 285, Motherboard Systemboard with Intel® X58 Chipset.
Quick little thing but the 1 min 40 sec boot time annoyed me, my frist try at trying to reduce this was to try raid 0. I found some HD502HJ Samsung sata 500G 16Mb at a reasonable price after looking at tomshardware. I used the Intel matrix storage to create a volume and used an image of the original hard drive for an OS. The drives worked very good, read 270 Mb, writes 230 Mb, but the boot time remained the same.
Next I went to the Intel 160g SSD, upgraded the firmware, cloned the original hd to the ssd. I still got the 1 min 40 sec boot time, performance index of 5.9. the toolbox would not install to the ssd. The cloning software also put a partition of the MBR on the SSD, about 10.5 gb. While working with drivers and controllers I got a not a genuine windows install and windows would not load. Since Win 7 arrived I did a clean install of Win 7 after formatting and reducing the partition to 100 mb so I get a performance index of 7.8 and a boot time of 40 sec.
The computer originaly came with Vista and is upgraded to Win 7. I have the Gateway Vista OS, Vista drivers, Win 7 OS and Win 7 driver disks. Purchased an installed MS win 7 on the ssd.
Carl

So you did a clean install and your bootup time got reduced. What's your question then?

[Carl2]

The question is I still have the raid volume, can the raid volume be used as the backup device without hurting the ssd. Is trim in windows 7 used with the ssd when using the msahci.sys and trim is disabled when using the iastor.sys driver?
In device manager I see two controllers, either two Standard controllers or two Intel controllers, or a mixture. Is there a way to connect the SSD to a controller with the msahci.sys driver and have the raid volume connect to the controller with iastor.sys driver?
Next will a raid controller card eliminate problems for the ssd?
Carl2

[Thrackan]

The raid volume: on what disk(s) is that? The SSD? Or some regular HDD(s)?
I honestly don't know how a backup device can "hurt" an SSD...

TRIM is enabled during install. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe both drivers support TRIM.

Connecting to another controller means you have to literally connect the HDD to a different port. For non-raid volumes this should be fine, but moving a raid volume between different controllers can get you problems.

Is there a reason why you want to connect the SSD and the RAID volume to two "different" controllers?

And last, you ask about "eliminating problems for the ssd", but what problems?

[Carl2]

The raid volume is on two samsung Hd's. Seems there are a lot of things being said about SSD. I haven't made a backup or restore point, think I can put it on another hard drive. I do know that you always see set the bios to AHCI. If I use raid the controller needs the iastor.sys. I also saw somewhere the SSD should have a msahci.sys driver. I should try Booting into the SSD with raid enabled, pretty sure I did this in the past. I believe I have two controllers, 1 for internal drives and one for external drives. This may be the answer.
Carl2

[Thrackan]

Well, as long as you're running a raid volume, your controller should be set to raid.
A single disk (SSD) on a controller running RAID mode shouldn't hurt.