GIGABYTE Z87X-HD3 with 1 SSD and 2 HDD with intel's smart response technology

[7racecar7]

Hello,

I would like to setup a system with GIGABYTE Z87X-HD3 that uses intel's smart response technology with 1 SSD drive and 2 HHD drives and the 2 HHD will be in RAID 1 mode, can this be done?

If not, any recommendations on the best way to backup disk  with 1 SSD and 2 HHD the 2 HHD drives are VelociRaptor 10,000RPM SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache for performance?

Operating system is windows 7

Thank you

[dmdilks]

What drive are going to put OS on? Plus here is a little info on what you are trying to do.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Intel-Smart-Response-Technology-Explained/1292

[7racecar7]

What drive are going to put OS on? Plus here is a little info on what you are trying to do.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Intel-Smart-Response-Technology-Explained/1292

Operating system will be in the SSD, from what I understand that offers the performance gains.

[dmdilks]

It doesn't work that way, you use the SSD for cache memory read what I put up on that link.

[7racecar7]

I now understand, it basically is a cache

in this case can i put the operating system on a partition of the ssd and the smart response on another partition of the same ssd and then have my storage hdds (2)in a raid 1 config in order to accelerate the storage on raid 1 (2hhd)?

[mikeyb5753]

it doesn't work that way either. if you're installing os an ssd then smart response isn't needed.

smart response is for speeding up os when installed on a mechanical drive, the ssd is used as a cache for most frequent used os files.

therefore, if you install os on ssd -  no need to cache

[7racecar7]

thank you then it seems there is no reason to use smart response, i was thinking it could speed up access to the data files that programs would store on the raid 1 volume, for example quickbooks

so the config will be 1 ssd with os 2 hhd in raid 1, also been reading about trim is there a concern with trim in this setup? is trim the same as garbage collection? thank you for your help

[mikeyb5753]

TRIM isn't such an issue nowadays as most SSD's have it built-in, and the Z87 can pass the command in RAID mode.