I have 3 HD's, 2 WD CAVIAR black editions; and now newest to the collection my Intel X25-m G2 80gb SSD. The SSD will have the OS on it, and the other 2 hd's will be used for application/data/file storage in most cases. I would like to use RAID 0 to increase the performance of these drives. But I don't want the SSD to be RAID (it would bottleneck my SSD correct?). Is it possible to do this, and is it worth my efforts? The O/S is windows 7 64bit pro.

PS: i've never used RAID (successfully) before. haha...

h0wHow would you plan on having the SSD drive contain the OS and have a RAID setup for the other drives ? ?
I'd look for performance increases elsewhere...but that's just me.Is RAID going to give you the performance increase you're after?
RAID 0 will theoretically double your sequential transfer speeds but will not decrease seek time. If all you want to do is read and write large files, and you're not concerned about losing data, set the two HDDs as RAID 0.
If you want to be safe if one drive fails, and increase your sequential read speeds with the cost of losing one drive's capacity and slower speeds elsewhere, use RAID 1.
You shouldn't need to use specific ports - it's likely that the "RAID ports" you refer to are ports linked to an addon controller, which will be even slower than the "fake RAID" Intel storage controller which will control the rest of your ports. If you want to use RAID, I advise you use the normal SATA ports.
As very few people see the speed DIFFERENCE moving to a RAID setup, I can't recommend that you go for it. If however you don't mind the disadvantages of RAID and you will actually BENEFIT from higher sequential transfer rates, by all means gp ahead, good luck to you.
Hope this helps.Well I really don't need the performance but it would be nice to get the most out of my configuration. So which ever would be the best way to use it. whether it is RAID the 2 WD's and boot off of the SSD(possible?) or RAID one WD with the SSD (which seems stupid to me). or any other case that may be applicable here.

Hmm, thanks calum; I was unaware that I could use normal sata ports. I was just reading the manual that came with my MOBO and it said to use those ports.


Thanks for the quick replies both of you.If I were you, I would install the OS on the SSD, and use the WD drives separately. Perhaps use one for games and other applications, and the other for data storage. RAIDing one of the HDs with the SSD is definitely a very bad idea. It's certainly possible to install the OS on the SSD and RAID the two WD's though.
I just went back to check your board and I see you edited your original post heh, was it an Asus P6T? If the motherboard manual contradicts me, by all means listen to it I have to admit I didn't check but there's no logical reason why you would have to use only two ports for RAID and the others wouldn't work that way, not on an X58 board.I would use the 3rd hard drive for backups: 2nd drive data backups, SSD image backups.You're chasing ghosts expecting a performance gain using RAID for the everyday PC user...Quote from: patio on April 25, 2010, 11:02:10 AM

You're chasing ghosts expecting a performance gain using RAID for the everyday PC user...