Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of srjacob
srjacobFlag for United States of America

asked on

Replacing RAID0 with SSD

I am going to replace a RAID0 configuration (two Seagate Barracudas) with a 256 GB Samsung SSD.  I have several tools that will allow me to do this, including Acronis Backup and Recovery with Universal Restore.  The RAID 0 is on a Highpoint 3520 SATA hardware RAID controller.  I am running Windows 7 (64 bit).

My question is this:  Would I be better off keeping the single SSD on the Highpoint controller, or put it on one of the onboard SATA controllers?  My motherboard is a Tyan Thunder S2915-E, and both the Highpoint and mb SATA ports are 3 Gb/s.
Avatar of Aaron Tomosky
Aaron Tomosky
Flag of United States of America image

I'd put the ssd right on the mb an use the raid card to raid1 your old drives for backup and storage.
Use the onboard SATA.  Each port will do the full 3Gbit/sec, but on a low-end highpoint controller, the controller will be a bottleneck. They aren't designed for devices that can do 20,000+ IOPS
Avatar of srjacob

ASKER

Actually, the HPT3520 is a high-end controller.  It does the RAID right on the board hardware, so I don't think there will be much of a throughput problem.  If it was a low-end controller, I wouldn't have asked the question.

Since the RAID 0 is the boot drive, what problems will I have with the boot-time drivers?
I'd use Acronis or something to clone the raid0 to the new drive.
SOLUTION
Avatar of David
David
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of srjacob

ASKER

Thanks for your answers.  I will be using Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 with Universal Restore to do the cloning and restore.

I posed the question to Highpoint, and they said it wouldn't make any difference.  I have posed the question to Tyan (the motherboard mfgr) and we will see what they say.  I have a suspicion that the on-aboard SATA controller isn't all that fast either.

dlethe-you are correct on your assessment of RAID0.  I was expecting better performance out of the RAID0 than I actually got.  I have a RAID1 on this controller using two 2TB WD RE-4 drives, and I get better throughput from this than I get from the RAID0.

When I the answer from Tyan, I'll post it here.  

I was hoping someone who has done this before would give me an answer based on their experience.
If you want better performance, go with RAID1 and windows software mirroring.   Reason, is if it is a read, windows will balance I/Os so disk with least amount to do handles the request. In perfect world you get 2x IOPs and 2 x throughput on READS.  On writes, no gain, slight hit.  
P.S. if you benchmarked, then it would be great if you posted results. You have no idea how many times I tell people that going with RAID0 for the boot device to improve performance is a mistake. :)

People see benchmarks with RAID0 and think that this means that a boot disk will also benefit and get disappointed and confused.
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of srjacob

ASKER

Since no one else had any clue as to the answer, I did the extensive research and came up the answer myself.  Hopefully, by putting this question in the Experts-Exchange knowledge base, this will help someone else in the future.