What RAID controller for a pair of X25M G2s

[idata]

I am buying a new Windows 7 (i7-870 / P55) system with two 80GB X25-M G2s and would like suggestions for the best RAID controller. My biggest concern is one that will allow me the upgrade the SSD firmware easily.

[idata]

mgrmgr,

You don't have to buy a separate controller, use the sata controller from your motherboard, use sata port 0 and 1 – Check if your mobo has the latest bios – Check your drives for the latest firmware do this in legacy IDE mode - Than set your bios to raid or raid/ahci depending on bios version and mobo - Reboot and access the raid controller utility – Create your array - Stripe your drives (advise use 128K stripes) save and reboot – start installing OS – works like a charm. Let me know how it went, it looks like a lot of people on this forum have problems setting up raid, don't know why? In our data center I set up about 400 Intel SSD's in different configurations and with different controllers never had a single problem. Also utilize them on my personal system using the onboard controller like I state above no problems at all.

Success,

Roland

[idata]

I am having a new system built and setup for me by AVADirect, who have a good reputation for custom graphics editing Photoshop machines. Their recommendation was to get a separate RAID controller card for the pair of X25-Ms for performance reasons. Yes, that could easily be construed as bumping up the hardware to boost profits...except they saved me well over a thousand dollars by talking me OUT of things where there were less expensive alternatives, for instance the new i7-870 instead of an i7-975 Extreme which saved $500. So, I'm inclined to believe them when they say a separate RAID controller would improve performance. They recommended the 3WARE, 9650SE-4LPML, and, it's a little late to say this, but the purpose of my initial message was to see if there were other/better recommendations.

Now I'm in a quandary. There's still time before the build finalizes to change the controller. Any thoughts on whether the 3WARE controller is a serious mistake compared to the onboard Intel controller?

[idata]

mgrmgr,

It's your money, i believe it's a mistake – Your sata ports have 3 Gb/s each – Raid 0 works pretty much linear, so make the math you cannot saturate your onboard sata raid controller. Adding a second controller just gives more overhead on the system, I would like to see with 2 SSD's in raid 0 connected to an additional raid controller if you would have any performance gain, don't think so – Check some forums, you will see a lot that added a separate controller achieved sometimes lesser results – I believe raid controller cards are a good solution for servers and in case of large arrays – Of course if you do not have a sata raid controller build in the mobo you have no other choice.

Good luck,

Roland

[idata]

Thanks for the additional thoughts, Roland. I've copied and forwarded your message to the person I've been working with at AVADirect. I'm going to be away from the computer until Sunday, but I will forward his reply here if it seems worth the message space when I get back. Given our history together over the past two months while I've been spec'ing up a state of the art system, I suspect he'll be straight with me and will either change the system or give me good reasons why not. I'm curious to see what he has to say.

[idata]

Hi Roland, setting up the Raid is not really the problem. The problem I have had was that one drive just got disconnected (reported by Matrix Manager at OS level). After a reboot the drive Port was flagged as Fail with 'Reset Port Error' status. After braking the raid and re-initializing it it works fine for a couple of days. Then it happend again, and it was the same drive. Its still in RMA so I can't tell if this was a drive error or an incompatibility to my Hardware (Chipset, Bios etc.)

My Raid setup is like yours and performance was not an issue. I have read about others having the same problems with raid (0,1,5). That fact indeed scare me a bit. I hope that this was a drive failure and I will post my results after its back from RMA.