HOW TO: SATA III-SSD-RAID0-Windows Installation: Questions, Troubleshooting Thread

[dajohu]

Not sure if you care that much about the external HD brand or not. I bought a couple of these and have had zero issues with them. Fast and quiet, always work right away. These ae less than half the price of the ones you were looking at.

Newegg.com - Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB USB 3.0 Black Ultra-portable Drive STAA1000101

[ChaosShadow00x]

Not sure if you care that much about the external HD brand or not. I bought a couple of these and have had zero issues with them. Fast and quiet, always work right away. These ae less than half the price of the ones you were looking at.

Newegg.com - Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB USB 3.0 Black Ultra-portable Drive STAA1000101

I actually went ahead and bought the 1.5tb version refurbish, so it was only like 10$ more then that one. Cool deal i think. Thanks for the suggestion, both of you.

I'm probably going to with this corsair right here:

Newegg.com - Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

More constantly good reviews (the OCZ reviews are kinda smeared between good and bad), is a hell of alot cheaper, and by the stats, it actually performs just as well, if not a tad better.

Also its red. Every one knows red is the fastest color.

Tell me what you think, i'll go ahead with the purchase this coming Monday.

[wraithrsw]

I actually went ahead and bought the 1.5tb version refurbish, so it was only like 10$ more then that one. Cool deal i think. Thanks for the suggestion, both of you.

I'm probably going to with this corsair right here:

Newegg.com - Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

More constantly good reviews (the OCZ reviews are kinda smeared between good and bad), is a hell of alot cheaper, and by the stats, it actually performs just as well, if not a tad better.

Also its red. Every one knows red is the fastest color.

Tell me what you think, i'll go ahead with the purchase this coming Monday.

It's fine enough. OCZ's actually cheaper now if you want to deal with rebates.

[Phantom3D]

I installed my HyperX 120gb SSD in slot one. It installed windows, but once I was going to install drivers (for wifi) it froze. I reinstalled and tried again.. 3-4 times. Some times on boot I got "Disk read error".

Then I put back my normal disk in slot one and my ssd in slot two. The ssd was found and I had no problems with it. The HDD also worked (With windows installed).

Then I installed windows on the SSD again and kept it in slot two, changing the boot priority. Now it works perfectly.

Any ideas?

[Phantom3D]

No one has any idea of what this might be?

HD slot 1 does not work with the SSD, HD slot two works with the SSD. Both slots works with the "stock" WD Black HDD.

[Harryboiyeye]

Could be a dodgy SSD or HDD bay if it's doing that. I also had the same prob with windows install. Turned out to be a combo of the Bay and drive.

[Nicholaus.rossi]

Which computer do you have it installed in? I know it's the M18x forums, but your sig says M11x and a Dell Mini. Some of those cheaper notebooks have crappy onboard sata controllers. You may also have a faulty hard drive. If it's working now, I'd just let it be. One of your slots may have been SATA 1.5Gbps and the other could be SATA 3.0Gbps. The SSD might not have liked that slower slot.

[lnoton]

Finally installed my SSD.

Drove down to Overclockers UK (20mins) away, had it back home, installed and all updated with installs within 3hrs. Love SSD!

Must say I'm not noticing any real world difference compare to my desktop which has an old Vertex SATA3 in it. Sounds strange calling an SSD old.

So this leads to my question. I stupidly left the machine in RAID in the bios....I meant to get it to ACHI before I started.

So what is the impact of this on my SSD performance?

Note: After posting the bios, the machine boots logins and has all system try stuff running (norton, osd, intel controller, steam) within 18seconds.

[Xeneize]

Finally installed my SSD.

Drove down to Overclockers UK (20mins) away, had it back home, installed and all updated with installs within 3hrs. Love SSD!

Must say I'm not noticing any real world difference compare to my desktop which has an old Vertex SATA3 in it. Sounds strange calling an SSD old.

So this leads to my question. I stupidly left the machine in RAID in the bios....I meant to get it to ACHI before I started.

So what is the impact of this on my SSD performance?

Note: After posting the bios, the machine boots logins and has all system try stuff running (norton, osd, intel controller, steam) within 18seconds.

Just change it to ACHI and see if that improves performance (it should) also download ATTO or CrystalDIskMark and check to see what your pefroemance is. , also check to see that it's running SATA3.

[Nicholaus.rossi]

RAID and AHCI are exactly the same as for as real-world performance goes. The only reason to switch to AHCI is so you don't have to look at the RAID config screen every time you boot up. Make sure you do the proper tweaks for your SSD:
Disable superfetching.
Go to device manager > right click your SSD > Policy tab > click enable write cache buffer flushing.
Click My computer and right click on your C:\ drive. Disable indexing.
Disable Disk Defrag.

Run HWinfo or a similar program and ensure that the drive is operating in 6Gbps mode and not 3Gbps. A Crucial M4 should dominate a Vertex 2 drive.

If all else fails, reformat that bad boy and reinstall windows. Shouldn't take you longer than 10 mins if you're using a USB windows boot disk.