RAID + TRIM Support. When? a month/year/never?

[idata]

I just put a new work system together and I decided to use two X25m 80GB drives in a RAID1 configuration for reliabilty. I am now thinking I should have just gone with a single 160 or 80GB drive and then just set up a weekly backup to my 1TB HDD. This way I would get the advantages of using TRIM support. I am using Windows 7 64-bit on an ASUS P7P55D-E Pro

Does anyone have any idea when RAID1 (or 0) will gain support for TRIM? I can certainly wait, but I would like to know the approximate time frame on this. Thanks

[idata]

Yes, I read that too -- apparently Win7 and 2K8 allow you to create a mirror'd dynamic disk group from the boot drive.

"The question then is does the Windows software Raid 1 speed up the read speeds in the same way a hardware raid does?"

Yes, it does. Since the data is mirrored, the OS can read a file from both drives at the same time -- the speed of reads should be linear, just like RAID0.

However, writes will not be increased at all -- they will actually get slower since it has to write the data to both drives at once.

Just some other information for you -- software RAID1 and RAID0 are actually no different (speed wise) than hardware RAID1 and RAID0.

RAID1 and RAID0 do not require any complex algorithms -- the operations required to do so are not CPU intensive at all.

RAID5 is another story. The parity calculations needed by RAID5 (and RAID3,4,6, etc) are very CPU intensive.

Software parity RAID will never be as fast as hardware parity raid; even with an i7 cpu and tons of ram.

IO Processors \ ASICs (RISC cpus) are designed with minimal instruction sets and are very efficient at these operations compared to the CISC cpus that we use in our personal computers.

There's a problem with Windows 7\2k8's RAID1 implementation though -- if one of your drives fail, you can't boot.

I believe you have to boot from the recovery dvd and rebuild the mirror with a new drive before you can get back into the OS.

Really stupid if you ask me! But then again, it's Microsoft...so no explanation needed..but hey, I could be wrong on that since it's never happened to me.

And again, TRIM shouldn't matter with a software RAID...you can either do it manually with the SSD Toolbox app or Windows 7 should do it automatically for you.

I just think it really sucks that you can only boot from a RAID1 -- not RAID0 or RAID5.

Dynamic disks support both RAID0 and RAID5..there's just no way to install an OS volume to one...chicken and the egg kind of thing.

In order for that to work, MS would have to add their full disk management tool and recognize dynamic disks right from the OS installation -- that is what OS X does. Really surprised that they didn't do that with Windows 7...

[idata]

Thanks for all the answers on this. I think I am going to just continue using my hardware RAID1 configurationin my Win7-Pro-64 setup for now. I may switch to a single 160GB disk when the prices come down a bit and I have more confidence in SSDs...I have seen several fail (as in bricked), but have never seen an Intel unit fail....yet. Having the redundancy of RAID1 does provide some peace of mind.

I will soon have much more experience with these as the XP-based product my company makes is now switching from a 160GB HDD to the X25m-80GB SSD (we only need about 32GB.) This will let me see how well they perform in the field. We only ship about 50/month of this product but that should give me a good idea of the reliability....and since I am in product support, I will be the first to hear of any problems!

[idata]

This update has nothing to do with TRIM. This is just an update on the reliablity of the SSD in our particular application. If you read my previous post you will see that we are shipping about 50 of these per month to customers. We have been doing this for several months now and have yet to have a field failure. We have had 2 failures in production, but those were because someone tried to hot-swap them; against all of our procedures. So far I am very happy. Previously our mechanical HDD was one of our highest failure rate items and now it is the lowest (or, should I say, non existant.)

[idata]

caesarv, what you be able to elaborate on the type customers and usage?

[idata]

Our company makes various types of communications test equipment. These cost $10k-$300k apiece and weigh from 20lbs to almost 100lbs.

Most customers are high tech communications companies, aerospace and defense companies, and some medical companies.

All of our instruments run XP as the operating system; with the instrument application run on top of XP. Most user turn on the instrument on Monday morning and do not turn it off until Friday...if ever. Some are used in automated systems and are run 24 hours a day. Some are wheeled around to test things, such as aircraft. Of course, every customer is different.

CV