Storage Configuration Help Needed

[erocker]

Hello. I having some difficulty wrapping my head around this. I have an SSD on the way and apparently they need to run in AHCI mode (I may be wrong). The SSD will be my O/S drive and I have two 500gb HDD's in RAID 0 for games and another 1TB drive for storage.

The options I have in the bios are in the pictures below. If I need to use RAID, I have to set Sata ports 1-4 to RAID but once RAID is set, I can only set ports 5 and 6 to either RAID or IDE. If AHCI is indeed needed for the SSD, what do I need to do here?

Thanks much.

 

[mlee49]

My ssd wont boot under AHCI, I have it set to IDE.

Also I could never get raid to work with a single boot drive and other drives in Raid config.

 

[erocker]

My ssd wont boot under AHCI, I have it set to IDE.

Also I could never get raid to work with a single boot drive and other drives in Raid config.

Okay, good to know I can probably use IDE mode. I'm currently using my VelociRaptor as a single boot drive and using Raid just fine. It's been pretty easy with my past two AMD boards.

I'm now wondering.. If they are set to Raid, but not in a Raid array, would that be AHCI mode for the drives not in the array?

 

[AsRock]

Okay, good to know I can probably use IDE mode. I'm currently using my VelociRaptor as a single boot drive and using Raid just fine. It's been pretty easy with my past two AMD boards.

I'm now wondering.. If they are set to Raid, but not in a Raid array, would that be AHCI mode for the drives not in the array?

Would not think so, Although you could always see if ya SSD boots when raids selected.

For what it's worth mine have been just fine in raid even in Vista were trim is not supposed to be supported ( unless that changed with the intel drivers..

With intel chipset the drives not in raid will be seen as spare drives.

 

[slyfox2151]

my SSD worked in all 3, IDE AHCI and Raid.



i used to have my SSD as my OS drive with 2 raid 0 on the same intel Controller... worked flawlessly.







the only time i ran into a problem was with windows setup, i had to set it to AHCI and only connect the SSD wile installing windows, or it would say it cannot be installed blah blah blah.... after the install compleated, i just set it to raid mode. booted up and installed drivers .... all was well.

 

[erocker]

Thanks for the comments and help. So, I really don't want to do a fresh O/S install at this point. Is it ok to clone my O/S from my old HDD to the SSD, or I should say.. anything special that needs to be done to the SSD before I clone the O/S over to it?

 

[AsRock]

I would of thought it would be possible, been meaning to try that out but never got around to it even more so when the steal factory screwing around and actually getting the sizes wrong on a mod i am trying to get done and they measured it them selfs now they want me to take my comp back over to them which means striping it down once again haha..


Anyways, while i am thinking about it i'm going try it out lol. Hopefully the free WD software will work with having WD drives in the system.

 

[cadaveca]

WD gives out Acronis for free with thier drives now, BTW(available on WD site).

Erocker, non-raid drives when in RAID mode work fine as AHCI.

 

[erocker]

WD gives out Acronis for free with thier drives now, BTW(available on WD site).

Erocker, non-raid drives when in RAID mode work fine as AHCI.

Excellent! I lost my Seagate disk that had cloning software on it. Thanks!

 

[cadaveca]

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

 

[AsRock]

Well i just used the clone option of Acronis and it worked perfectly coping a raid 0 (SSD 2 partitions) and cloning it to a 250GB HDD.

Messed up some apps due to running some apps on other HDD's but it works great.

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

I had a similar issue, I have 2 300gb v-raptors in raid and an ocz vertex le for my os drive.
I had to decided over trim on ssd or raid for the raptors. raid for the raptors was a bigger benifit.
You can do a manual trim on your drives too.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64753

Another thing for me was I have 2 seperate controllers on my board, the sb850 and the giga raid controller

the giga raid has an ahci option too so first I used it to raid my raptors and the sb850 for my other drivers in ahci mode. My raid speeds were horrible, maxing out at 160mb/s.
So i swapped them around, put the ssd on the giga raid contrller in ahci mode and raid 0 on the sb850. same thing, the ssd maxed out at 160mb/s

So now I just run everything in sb850 raid mode. That way i get full speed out of everything and only loose trim which isnt that big of a deal if you manual trim it every 2-3 weeks.

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

I was just looking at your board, it has a seperate controller for 1 sata 3gbs right?

its the single sata thats by iteself under your normal sata slots.

put your ssd on that one and set it to ahci. put the other drives in the sata 6gb slots and run them in raid. you end up with the same issue as me and the single sata will bottle neck your drive, but its worth a shot.

 

[erocker]

I was just looking at your board, it has a seperate controller for 1 sata 3gbs right?

its the single sata thats by iteself under your normal sata slots.

put your ssd on that one and set it to ahci. put the other drives in the sata 6gb slots and run them in raid. you end up with the same issue as me and the single sata will bottle neck your drive, but its worth a shot.

Actually, I think that single sata port is for an optical drive. That's what it says in the manual anyways. I'll hook the SSD up to sata port 1 which will be in Raid mode.

So before I get to cloning the O/S on the SSD, what steps need to be done?

1. Check for a firmware update?
2. Do I need to check "alignment" or anything like that?
3. I already have things turned off (defrag, indexing, etc.) anything else there?
4. Any other tips?

 

[AsRock]

i have the page file, hibernation file and error reporting turned off as well. I'm running 8GB and only program that has gave me issue is Titan Quest.


You could check the alignment but when i did it to 4 computer and one laptop they were all fine.

Could do no harm right though .

Well back to fixing my bike... Missing the summer rides .

 

[erocker]

Well, my performance isn't what it should be. About 160 write 245 read. I have everything off that needs to be off. Is this because I didn't install Windows with AHCI mode?

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

no mines not in ahci mode and I get 260 write 280 read on my vertex le.

try this little trick

Download MyDefrag - http://www.mydefrag.com/
Run the flash defrag on the ssd, it will just consolidate without alot of writing. Its made for ssd's so it wont hurt it.
then Download AS-Clean - http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12488&d=1257418520
After running the flash defrag start up as-clean and check the ff option. let it run.

This is pretty much a manual way of trimming the drive.

after you do that, run atto and see what your speeds are.

 

[erocker]

no mines not in ahci mode and I get 260 write 280 read on my vertex le.

try this little trick

Download MyDefrag - http://www.mydefrag.com/
Run the flash defrag on the ssd, it will just consolidate without alot of writing. Its made for ssd's so it wont hurt it.
then Download AS-Clean - http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12488&d=1257418520
After running the flash defrag start up as-clean and check the ff option. let it run.

This is pretty much a manual way of trimming the drive.

after you do that, run atto and see what your speeds are.

I did get things working better. 260 write and 270-ish read. Does the 2nd link erase the driver or can I do both these things with Windows installed?

 

[hat]

If you're going to be running in AHCI mode coming off of IDE mode, you'll have to reinstall the OS. My system bluescreens if I try running it in AHCI mode, need to reinstall windows to get it to work I suppose.

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

you can do both with windows installed

it just writes 1's to the free space then cleans it

Only do it when it start to loose performance, maybe once a month cause the defrag still writes to the drive just minimally.

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

If you're going to be running in AHCI mode coming off of IDE mode, you'll have to reinstall the OS. My system bluescreens if I try running it in AHCI mode, need to reinstall windows to get it to work I suppose.

you can you just need to edit the registy before changing it in bios

Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
Restart
Go into bios and switch to ahci mode
windows will redetect all drive and youll need to restart again