[Need Help] RAID 4 SSD's. Two for WIN7 and two for OS X.

[cornrooster]

So I'm running out of space on my two 120GB Sandisk boot/program drives. I'm going to buy 2 more 120gb drives.

My goal is to RAID two SSD's for windows 7 and the other two for Mountain Lion.

I have a 1TB hard drive for my data (music,video,etc..)

I just need some help/direction on how to do this.

Help/suggestions are appreciated!

 

[Going Bald]

Why RAID SSD drives? Isn't microseconds fast enough for you, you want nanoseconds?

Seriously, a RAID boot drive is nothing but a headache and invitation to trouble. Especially in a dual boot situation because OS X doesn't recognize any raid except one done with its own disk utility and you have to have the SATA ports set to AHCI for OS X. On the other hand, Win7 can't see an OS X disc even in RAID without 3rd party apps, and Win7 uses the BIOS level hardware fake RAID setup, and the SATA ports have to be in RAID mode.

So there you are, booting to BIOS to change your settings every time you want to swap operating systems.

Better to leave your OS X and Win7 SSD's alone and move your users to platter drives.

 

[ggeorge]

So I'm running out of space on my two 120GB Sandisk boot/program drives. I'm going to buy 2 more 120gb drives.

My goal is to RAID two SSD's for windows 7 and the other two for Mountain Lion.

I have a 1TB hard drive for my data (music,video,etc..)

I just need some help/direction on how to do this.

Help/suggestions are appreciated!

I would agree with GB.

What do you think that RAIDing the 2 SSDs will do for you exactly? Unless you are doing some heavy duty number crunching or working with large scratch files, a single good SSD will be as fast as makes a difference. Even if you do need the extra throughput, you might be better off changing your SSD type. Sandforce SSDs (the most common and cheapest on average) don't do very well with highly compressed data (like video). So switching to an SSD that does work well with compressed data might well yield greater gains.

If you REALLY want to do something like this, then get a hardware raid card that works in both OSX and windows. Just keep in mind that you are talking about $300-$500+ for a card like this.

RAID is safer with SSDs since you don't have to worry about mechanical failures, but I'm still leery of RAID 0's potential for loosing your data on BOTH drives. If something goes wrong with one of them.

If you are talking about RAID 1 (mirroring) for security, you can accomplish much the same thing by simply using a program like Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate the contents of one drive to the other, without worrying about RAID.

Also arguably a better solution is to simply buy a single 240gb SSD (or larger, there are 480gb+ ssd for under $300).

Another solution would be to simply get one of the four 2.5" to one 5.25" bay RAID cages and simply swap the SSDs when you want to boot from one or the other.

 

[cornrooster]

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't want to RAID for more speed. I want RAID for more space. I'm running out of program space on my two SSD's.

 

[Einsteiniac]

As others have said, RAID 0 will get you more space, but at a cost - the risk of losing EVERYTHING if something goes wrong with the RAID; the problem Going Bald mentioned with having to change BIOS settings to boot into one OS or the other.

The easiest solution I can think of to resolve BIOS issues which I can't verify exists but I would say they do if a few of those guys say they do. But if you get a cheap Highpoint 2720SGL. You can setup 2 striped arrays with that and that card has boot support both on Mac and Windows. Now that said I am fairly positive Chimera sees those drives at boot because I have my server machine with that card and on reboot it takes awhile for Chimera to register with the card active. However I don't have an OS on my volume so I can't tell you for 100% certainty that Chimera will list the volumes at that point. I don't see why not though.

Mark

 

[Going Bald]

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't want to RAID for more speed. I want RAID for more space. I'm running out of program space on my two SSD's.

If you are running out of space, then just add more drives or larger drives, or use an eSATA/USB3 connected storage box like this one - http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...=548&cl_index=12&sc_index=42&ss_index=115&g=f
or this larger one - http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/produc...=549&cl_index=12&sc_index=42&ss_index=115&g=f
or a NAS like - http://www.amazon.com/Lian-Li-Network-Storage-Enclosure/dp/B007OPX1WS/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1347720670&sr=1-4&keywords=lian+li+ex-30