Looking for Fast SSD drives for a RAID-0

so im looking for a fast ssd to buy to set up a raid for my m18x or maybe an msata.

is the m18x msata port Sata 3? and possible to raid?

thanks.

 

msata port is sata 2, as far as raid 0 experience with it I am trying to find out myself how raid 0 with ssd(s) + msata works.

 

I have done the following:

1) mSata Adata 300x (256 gb SATA III) the slot is SATA II however. bought from newegg.ca in my case. I am very happy with it no problems so far.

The next part is trickier, Alienware says you need 7mm drives if you are going to install 3 in the HDD caddy. The best RAID0 config is to use the top and bottom slots for this (SATA ports 0,1) which are SATA III. The middle one is SATA II.

I have ended up with: Top /Bottom Crucial 512 GB M4's in RAID0 giving me about 950 GB for that drive. I chose the 7mm versions of these SSD's from Newegg.ca

In the middle slot I used an Intel 320 160 GB SSD, this has been designated as my boot drive (OS drive) because it has excellent retention in the case of power problems etc. It is also SATA II and you can get them a a good price now I got mine for $130.00, it is also 7mm.

So I now have almost 1.4 TB of SSD I am hopeful this will suffice.

It is all working well now.

PS I had a Vertex II in the bottom slot. That did not work well and forced my hand to the Crucial upgrade

 

Hi, you say you had Vertex2 and it didnt work well, what do you mean by that, was it underperforming in R/W or giving BSOD's and other crashes freezes etc??

I have 2 x 256GB Vertex4 Drives to go in as RAID0 top and bottom drive slots, and middle will be 9mm 1TB HDD for storage archiving purposes solely ... have anyone of yous used my mentioned vertex4 with adverse effect in M18X R2??

 

I have 3 Sandisk at 240GB each, all 9 mm and they fit just fine. I am using them (independent), since about 3 months no issues whatsoever. For the mSATA I use mushkin ssd 240GB. All drives are sata III but however 2 work in SATA II and 2 in SATA III mode due to intel limitation. I use the mSATA for boot / operating system and works just fine.

I had issues with one of the ssd disappearing and I was standing by the ssd (no issues), finally replaced motherboard but matter still was not solved, ended up that was the connector from the hdd to the motherboard. So, be aware, sometimes not only the drives have issues...

 

Lots of folks using Vertex 4 in the M18x R1/R2. Awesome drives, and no issues reported that I have seen. Indilinx seems to work very well.

Edit: OK, I've seen a couple of examples since posting this that the Vertex 4 is having issues dropping to SATA 2.0 speeds in the M18x R2. Hope it is just an SSD firmware issue.