How to setup OCZ Agility 3 120GB RAID?

[Dabert]

Just to make a SSD Raid on my computer system I bought this OCZ Agility 3 12GB SSD. But from past one months I am trying to get a proper detailed information or guide for setting up OCZ Agility 3 RAID but whenever I check out internet I end up getting some old information which is of no use. So therefore now I have decided to come here and try out the same for the last time, if I get the information then its fine otherwise I will drop the idea of setting up RAID. The main problem is that I have never tried doing a RAID arrangement therefore I am scared to do it myself without any guidance. Anyways is there anyone present over here who has at least some idea about the RAID arrangement, it would be really helpful if you can help me out from the scratch as I already said that I have no idea about RAID arrangement. For your convenience let me tell you that I am running windows 7 64 bit onto my system with all the latest updates including the drivers.

[Denholm]

The first and the foremost thing I would like to suggest you is to go for doing the things with a fresh install, it will really help you out. Just make sure that you do a secure erase of any of the used SSD then setup the array with 64k or 128k stripe, then install the OS and AMD RaidXpert. The most important thing I would like to suggest you is to make sure that you’re both the drivers are running the latest firmware 2.15. Rest everything will be helped by the motherboard manual. Yes if you have your motherboard manual that’s enough for you to get everything, this manual will help you through all the steps from the scratch as you needed. It contains everything from entering the Raid Menu to exit. If you are now aware let me tell you that there is also a newer BIOS that is needed to be flashed by you before you install it.

[Gameli]

I guess before you jump into arranging the RAID level better you first do a lot of research and gather as much as knowledge regarding the same, remember that setting up a RAID and then maintaining the RAID volume is not so easy you need to know the system first and then your way around the BIOS and your Operating System. Anyways enough with the warning now I would like to give you some information about the Raid level. About Raid level I can only say that Raid 0 actually doesn’t really RAID as there is no redundancy, you know if any of the drive fails then you are bound to lose everything but somehow you will be encountering a good read and write performance increase if and only if you have a correct and proper hardware. Anyways once again I would say that better you don’t use RAID 0 that too with two SATA3 drives on a motherboard that has only SATA2 support into it. It might not have a bandwidth with is required. Now regarding RAID 1, I would say that Raid 1 is the simplest RAID configuration with redundancy, if in case one drive is failed then you have to just replace that drive and then rebuilt the array but remember that you have given up almost half of the storage space as each and everything is copied to the both drives and therefore you get no read write increased performance.

[Dannai7]

Better you consult your motherboard Manual and get the details about enabling RAID into the BIOS and once done with this know how to access the RAID ROM. And if you are done with both the thing better you select the Drives that you are supposed to stripe together and then select stripsize, I guess 64k will be fine. And then select the total size of the RAID volume. the best place for overprovision I would suggest you to set the RAID volume to latter. Better you set it to some 20-30% less than maximum, now you will have a potent array with respect to the longevity and performance. And as suggested above you are however supposed to install AMD RaidXpert, its must and also remember that it should be obviously residing at the OS partition and nowhere else. If you are done with the installation and other things just make sure that the writeback cache and the NCQ is enabled over there, alongside also check in the Device manager, it should be present over there too. After installing I would surely hold off any benchmarking only for the first day besides running the WEI. This is to simply let all your drives and the Operation system to finish the settings including the mapping and Volsnap. Ok now the most important thing is to make the backup image, you need to do this once you are done with the setup as according to your requirement and necessity with the most basic needs. Anyways now run the Anvil’s benchmark at least once just for the verification purpose. Hope so everything should be working fine but even if you have any issue or problem with it please inform me.

[chuck28]

Please help me out with this thing, during the set up I am unable to install windows. When I try to put up Windows 7 64 bit Raid drivers i am shown with a message saying that they are unsigned. However I have tried installing them from the official website of my motherboard i.e.ASUS form the motherboard CD-ROM. Also I am very much doubtful with the RAIDXpert, heard from somewhere that AMD have still not released any proper form of RaidXpert with the SB950 based platform for any kind of use whereas the SB850 version is available at AMD site but this will however install the necessary performance option and therefore am not user accessible. I have been watching at many users with most of the 64Bit signed drivers that are showing unsigned driver error as the result of the install media that is being altered in some of the other manner or not legit. Another cause of the issue could be the device being used to read the media.

[Yistor]

There is reason for me to worry now my windows 7 is being loaded too slowly, when I checked out the time it took some 25 to 30 seconds to load, I simply don’t feel that my system is performing well and as according to my expectation, its not working as faster as it should be with just one SSD. When I have only one SSD installed into my machine the system performs fast and quicker but with multiple SSD it performs the worst. It doesn’t performs the same all the time, sometimes it is slow whereas sometimes things go fine and fast. Another problem is that every time after I exit the BIOS my RAID array gets automatically disappeared. I do not get the RAID post instead the raid array itself is disappeared. When checked, I noticed that all my hard drives are displayed with an error message saying that the operating system is missing. After I rebooted the system I am still getting the same message and when checked the BIOS now I am unable to see the RAID option in the boot section other than just one SSD. Just wanted to ask you people whether the load time for the windows 7 that I have mentioned is fine for this kind of set up or not. If not then do you people have any suggestion for optimizing the RAID or the load time? However when I do some sort or arrangement and adjustment the windows 7 load time is reduced to 15 seconds which differs a lot with the previous load time.