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6636
Is Raid the correct setting?
Hi,
While in my bios I noted that the Raid/ACHI was set to Raid.
Is that the correct setting for 180g SSD boot drive combined with the 1tb HDD?
Thanks!
This post is more than 5 years old
2 Posts
0
6636
Hi,
While in my bios I noted that the Raid/ACHI was set to Raid.
Is that the correct setting for 180g SSD boot drive combined with the 1tb HDD?
Thanks!
Top
jphughan
9 Legend
9 Legend
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14K Posts
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July 4th, 2018 08:00
In that setup when running Windows it doesn’t matter. RAID is required if you want to use an SSD as a cache module to accelerate the spinning drive’s performance, but that’s usually done with a 32GB SSD. RAID also makes it easier to run NVMe SSDs with Windows 7, since it doesn’t natively support NVMe and therefore you either need a third-party NVMe driver or you need to use RAID mode so the Intel RST controller abstracts the NVMe interface. On the other hand, Linux might require AHCI because it doesn’t support newer RST controller versions.
If you were doing a clean install of Windows 8 or newer right now, I’d recommend going with AHCI so you wouldn’t have to deal with possibly having to provide the Intel RST driver during Windows Setup and because you don’t need anything that RAID mode does. However, switching modes on an existing Windows installation involves jumping through some hoops. If you just change it and try to boot normally, Windows won’t start afterward, but since RAID mode doesn’t slow you down either, it’s not really worth the effort in my opinion. The only possible exception would be if you had an NVMe SSD that supported a third-party driver that was faster than Microsoft’s own. In that case, it might perform better with that driver, but you’d need to get the system into AHCI mode to use it.
bkdamon
2 Posts
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July 5th, 2018 03:00
Thank you!
Pragmatic Cynicism
1 Message
0
July 6th, 2018 04:00
Do not use RAID setting.
I bought this Alienware Aurora R7 for $500 because some **bleep** changed the setting to RAID with only 1-1TB HDD installled.
This thing has a i5-8500k 2.81ghz cpu,1070 8gb gfx card, and 32GB ram, but it ran less like Forrest Gump, and more like Lt. Dan after half a gallon of Wild Turkey when I got it.
There are many RAID configurations, but at minimum, if you do not have 2 identical HDDs, you do not want to use the RAID setting.
Raid-0 is a configuration that saves half the data on 1 drive, and half the data on another. When set with only 1 HDD, the drive stripes half the data on the outside of the disk, and the other on the inside. If used with an SSD, it simply divides the data, and places it in 2 different locations for no reason.
In the case of this computer, the HDD was chopping data in half, and had to physically move the write arm outside, and inside continuously. It basically burned up the HDD, and was 10 times slower in doing so.
RAID-1 simply mirrors the data on 2 drives. Whereas RAID-0 is designed to increase speed of writing/reading* (*when used with 2 drives [O-{ X _ X }-O]), RAID-1 is designed for redundancy.
If 1 drive fails, the other has the exact same data.
What you want to do is just install windows on the SSD, and pretend it's your only "HDD", using a standard ACHI stetting.
Then add the HDD, and configure it for storage using disk management, or through the "STORAGE" setting.
You can have specific types of files save directly to the HDD, use it for FILE HISTORY, and save BACKUPS/DISK IMAGES on it.
The SSD will hold all the applications you use, and all the other windows mumbo jumbo, so everything runs super-fast.
Anyhow, look into RAID-5 if you think you need a RAID configuration, because
the DUMBS***; and honestly, if you need RAID at all: you may as well go straight to a RAID-10 setup, because, again....
the DUMBS***.