RevoDrive x2 on a GA-X58A-UD3R

[Aussie Allan]

Need some Qualified help here guys! Have had a nightmare with my new build trying to get the on-board "Marvell" controller to work as advertised!...last try was a couple of Momentus XT-500s in raid0...Oh well, ... live and learn! was OK but not the performance I really need/want

To cut to the chase my parts list I now have to play with is as follows
1) GA-X58A-UD3R ver2-Fg1 Bios
2) i7-950@ 4.2 (Full water)
3) 24 Gb DDR3
4) GTX-480@925
5) Revodrive x2-100 for C:
6) 6x500 Samsung spinpoints
7) 2x500 Momentus XTs
Highpoint RocketRaid 640 (4 port sata)
The Highpoint card came Yesterday and the Revo will be here Tuesday! I mainly do high end Photo-editing and software testing for reviews/blogs........My first thought was to have:
1) Revo , Bottom 16x slot for C:
2) Highpoint 640 with 4x500 spinpoints for quickish photo storage on PCI port
3) 2x500 spinpoints in raid1 for photo back-up on ports ??
4) 1x500 Momentus XT for Acronis continues clone back-up for C: on port
I also have a 1TB-USB Drive that could be lonely now ?
Any advise would be gladly digested as I have never used SSD and am becoming aware that I need to keep IOPS free on the board for the Revo to really shine. Some insight into the garbage collection and what not to do with SSD, ...eg defrag,how much to put on the drive beside OS and CS5 (Photoshop and plug-ins)

Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Allan

After going through your (massive) list of drives I think I have found the most sensible way to configure them.

The boot drive SSD on Intel SATA2_0 port

RAID1 drives on GSATA ports

Momentus drive on Marvell SATA3 port

the rest of your RAID on the Highpoint card on PCI

Revodrive on PCIE slot.

Have a Happy Birthday!

[Aussie Allan]

 Thanks for coming back to me dark man,  I'm glad I wasn't too far off the mark with where to stick all them bits! will be nice to have all my backup drives in the case instead of on my office desk through sloooooooooooow usb. Which anwsers all my questions except for...............

 The only other thing I read on another forum post was Quote...." onboard raid is to be avoided if possible on all onboard SATA ports excluding raid cards" so the boot drive SSD (Revodrive x2) on PCI-X16 has enough band-width ......leave as much IOPS for the revodrive!.... even if you have to disable all ONboard raid in bios???

 Is this true mate!.... does not seem to make that much sense to me.....one part contradicts the other.

 P.S yes , sadly 21 tomorrow yet a bloody-gen

 Aussie Allan.........Many thanks for your time and timely answers.

[Dark Mantis]

Well as with anything there is always a tradeoff between the various sides. If you want to put all your drives on the inside as RAID then you have to use the ports in RAID configuration. Personally I don't think it will make much difference as most of the time the bus wont be transporting data from all drives at once.

I think the way I planned it is the most effective all things considered. There are of course other ways like putting both your 2 RAID1 drives and SSD on the Intel ports. There are however downsides to that as if the controller fails you lose your C drive and the C drive backup. The two slower drives might impact the performance of the SSD also.

You think you have problems I am 50 + VAT!!

[Aussie Allan]

 Grrrrreat idea Batman!.....method in madness grasshopper! and thanks for the inspiration...........thisarvo I'm going to put a master power switch between the PSU and all onboardl backup drives and go over to manual backup and clone once a week.........powering the backup set, on/off between boots, this should allow the revodrive (C:) and raid card (B: storage)  full and unfettered access to all resources

 50+vat eh!........So if we get rid of the government we'd all be twenty years younger........makes sense to me!

 Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I think it's the best way to go Allan.

Get rid of the government and we would all definitely be a lot younger no sweat! And if we got shot of the banks at the same time it could be heaven!

[oggmonster]

Don't forget folks, if you don't want the government to read your thoughts, remember to put on your tin foil hats!

On a serious note how have you got on with the RevoDrive x2 in your motherboard. I have the same board as you and am seriously considering a revo x2 (if/when the bank allows it)

[Aussie Allan]

Don't forget folks, if you don't want the government to read your thoughts, remember to put on your tin foil hats!

On a serious note how have you got on with the RevoDrive x2 in your motherboard. I have the same board as you and am seriously considering a revo x2 (if/when the bank allows it)

 The sale of one of my kids was approved yesterday so the RevoDrive x2 arrives tomorrow morning, might be a day or two but I will  supply some running commentary, I suspect it'll be like a roller-coaster ride emotionally to get all the drives in and working how I want it. I've been reading and posting a fair bit this last 4 days and like anything cutting edge out there it's never as simple as the salesmen says!

 I think I'll have not too many problems installing and configuring the card and  OS to a stable state,....the fun will start when I go to the next step with the Highpoint RocketRAID 640 PCI card.......OCZ support have been pretty good advising me to ...........And quote "you should be able to disable it's Boot Rom via FW. This should minimise any Rom "footprint/space" issues" end quote.

 After reading this back from one of the site support administrators I might be pushing my luck getting 7 drives + Revo all running under one bonnet, But we'll see.........Another heartening quote was this one............Yep.. I got Revo_120 booting as C: + Revox2_480 Storage 1 + LSI 9260 4i (4x Vertex Turbo) Storage 2.. working happily together on an EVGA P55 Classified 200. (Bear in mind the Evga has the NF200 chip and extra Rom option space)............and even more applicable............I have the RocketRaid 644 in my MSI 890FXA-GD70 along with my Revo as my system drive (Windows 7 C: drive)....I get the "not enough space for option ROM to load" error at boot (you have to play around with the positioning of the Revo and RR card so Revo is "first" to initialize) for the RR card. But you can still use the Windows based management tool to create the array (I use Raid5) and then it functions perfectly fine as a storage drive (you just can't boot to it).....Stay tuned!!!

 Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

Please do give us details of the installation and setup as you go. It would be interesting for many people as these Revodrives in particular are  becoming much more prevalent.

If you need any more help with the setup maybe Pierre will help as he is our drive and RAID genious.

[Aussie Allan]

 Funny you should mention Pierre, seem to be a spade is a spade straight shooter (my type of person for problems and a beer) He seem to be pretty active in other forums and knows his Latin......if you have his ear, I,d love to have my post/thread put under his nose, ...I've already read some of his replies and would welcome his weighted opinion gladly.....

 Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

I'll see if he's not too busy.

[Aussie Allan]

 Many thanks Mantis!

 Aussie Allan

[F5BJR]

*
For option ROM problem you have a solution if you wish not boot with the HighPoint card

Use HPTFlash and test with Reallocate EBDA or INT 13 support options

Pierre

*
You can found HPTFlash with FirmWare / BIOS to this page

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600.htm

[Dark Mantis]

Thanks for dropping in Pierre.

[Aussie Allan]

 Merci beau coup Pierre (Kangaroo crap!, I hope I got the Nationality right!) and you too Mantis......know all I need to do work out how to use this information, ...I struggle with the English language to begin with but reading this short post makes me realize how little I still know......will get there in the end, ....I hope!

 Again many thanks to the pair of you.

 Aussie Allan