GA-X58A-UD3R V2.0 Setup

[NoSpeakWelsh]

Please forgive me as I am a bit out of tough this will be the first time I have built my own machine for 10 years.

What SATA port connections should I be using and is my intended setup possible?

What I want to do:-

2 x Corsair F40 SSD in raid 0 (for os and illustrator & photoshop etc...)
2 x ST3500418AS in raid 0 (for all other software + paging file)
2 x WD5000AAKS in raid 1 (for all mission critical data)

What part of my intended setup needs to go into the:

South Bridge
Marvell 9129
Gigabyte sata2 chip

I want to get the best performance for the drives that i have already, any other setup suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for your help
Richie

Other System Information:-
Win 7 64bit Ultimate, Coolermaster Haf X, GA-X58A-UD3R, Gigabyte 720 power supply, Intel i7 930, Corsair H50, 6GB 1066mhz DDR3,HD5770.

[Dark Mantis]

Well, sticky subject at the moment, running RAID on these boards especially with SSDs. Have you read the SATA3 problem thread? If not I would suggest having a look. Find it here: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2336.60.html
I think this will enable you to make up your own mind.

[Peteruk]

2 x Corsair F40 SSD in raid 0 (for os and illustrator & photoshop etc...)
2 x ST3500418AS in raid 0 (for all other software + paging file)
2 x WD5000AAKS in raid 1 (for all mission critical data)

Stick all of that lot on the blue ports and enable Intel RAID I know you can setup 2 arrays (not matrix RAID) but I'm sure it can do all 3 arrays you listed. Don't worry about it all being on the same controller the bandwidth is per port with the ICH10R linked to the X58 at 2GB/s which is 16Gb/s which may only cover 5 SATA 2 ports but your ST3500418AS & WD5000AAKS will not max SATA 2 speed per port so you will still have enough bandwidth to run all arrays at max speed at the same time.

Then have your DVD drives to the Marvell or Gigabyte sata2.   

[NoSpeakWelsh]

Thanks for your quick responses, I will do as Peteruk suggested and will let you all know how I get on, once it’s all running I will post some benchmark results regards to the storage performance.

[NoSpeakWelsh]

Finished last night finally managed to install windows 7 64 Ultimate.

6 Drives 3 x Raid Arrays

Tips:-

1. Use the blue SATA ports

2. Disable the floppy drive in the bios (had a problem with windows installing slowly)

3.Download the Intel windows 7 installation raid drives from the Gigabyte website and unpack them onto a USB stick put the stick into USB port in the rear, windows will find the drivers automatically during the installation. Nice and easy...

Windows experience index results:-

Processor:      7.5
Memory:      7.5
Graphics:      7.5
Gaming Graphics:   7.5
Primary hard disk:   7.5

[Dark Mantis]

Looks like everthing finally worked out for you. The Windows Experience results are good but they are not a reliable indication of the system performance. You would need to run a proper benchmarking program to have some figures that were actually comparable.

[NoSpeakWelsh]

Benchmarking

2 x Corsair F40 SSD in raid 0 in the blue SATA ports

Performance Test 7.0

Passmark for disk 3505.1
Read 456.8 mb/s
Write 94.3 mb/s
Random 418.1 mb/s

Happy with that....

[Dark Mantis]

On the whole very nice figures  I was a little surprised that the write speed was as low as it was though because in our tests recently the SSD write speed sometimes nearly matched the read speed.

[Peteruk]

The write speed might be that  write-back cache is not enabled in RST.

[Dark Mantis]

Possibly. Is your drive SATA3?

[NoSpeakWelsh]

The Results are in:-

Used ATTO Disk Benchmark:

Max Read 572 Mb/s 
Max Write 528 Mb/s 

Now that makes me happy well worth £180

Photoshop & Illustrator load in under 3 seconds from first start 
Microsoft Word & Excel load instantly form first start 



System Setup:-

GA-X58A-UD3R

2 x Corsair F40 SSD (SATA II) in raid 0 @ 64kb Stripe using the Intel Raid Controller

[Dark Mantis]

Excellent results now. That's more like what you should be getting. As the prices come down there will be more use made of the SSDs.