Installation of RAID or AHCI on Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 using Windows 7

[Rashid]

I am a beginner when it comes to building of a PC. I have started building a PC using a Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 motherboard. I am at the stage where I have to install BIOS for the motherboard. I am bit confused between which BIOS setting should I use for Marvell & Intel SATA ports, X2 SSD RAID0 or X2 WD BLACK RAIDO AHCI. I will be installing Windows 7 as my Operating system. Can anybody help me building such a system? Any help will be appreciated.

[Cain]

Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 motherboard has function to have three types BIOS; IDE, RAIDxhd and AHCI. If you are installing Windows 7 as your operating system than it has one advantage. It sets the Intel’s data port to RAIDxhd settings by default. So I suggest you to use X2 SSD RAID0 BIOS settings in your PC. But if comparison is made between ACHI type of BIOS and RAIDxhd type, then ACHI BIOS provides better control over the system. If you are using Western Digital Caviar Black hard disks, then set RAID 0 arrays using the 60 GB mSata as a cache through Intel rapid storage technology. If you are using Marvell Gsata3-6 or GSata3_7 ports, then the hard disk will be automatically set to RAID 0 arrays. You can use Trim Support technology to get such outcome.

[Quasim]

There is no need of having drivers installed in Windows 7 while using Intel RAID ports. You can keep the major drivers that very beneficial for working of system installed, but other drivers can be installed after BIOS is installed. After installing the BIOS it is recommended that you update every installed driver to its updated version. One great benefit of having Intel controllers and driver is that you can have two different types of RAID arrays installed in your system. I am not sure how efficient Intel’s mSata will be as compared to Marvell RAID, but you can try both as its functioning and behavior changes on different systems. The largest stripe size of array on Intel Raid system is 128 K. You should properly align SSD and RAID array before installing Windows 7 on your system.

[Geniee]

Even though the mSata is more efficient than Marvell RAID on Intel controller, I have seen many times that mSata fails to accelerate GSata ports as Marvell RAID does. Alignment of SSD and RAID is not important; you can work even without the alignment. It will save a lot of time of your work. But if you are getting Stripe size very low, like around 4 K then you will have to align SSD and RAID. Intel RST recommends having stripe size of at least 16 K, but you should try to achieve 128 K for better stability.

[jamiejohn]

Using Cache disk procedure, you can achieve three partitions on your first disk. If you are trying to use the actual RAID array partition, then let me tell you that dynamic RAID array partition is way better than actual RAID array partition. It will let you span the partition across the both drives.

[sushantbankar]

For alignment of SSD and SD and RAID, I suggest that you use the diskpart procedure. This is to be done before you install Windows on the empty drives. If you try to do it on a drive that has data in it, then much of the data will be erased or some might even become corrupt. To verify if the alignment and the partition is successful, you can test it with AS SSD. You have to select the drive that has been aligned and run the benchmarking test on it. This test will reveal the offset value of the alignment of drives. The values will be displayed in Red and green colors also with details if the offset value is OK or bad. If the value is displayed as Bad then you will need to align them once again.

[Arun K]

If you want the drives that you will be creating using the partition techniques, then you will need to use the RST techniques. It programs the arrays to accelerate the drives and also provide you the option to enable and disable the acceleration.

[raghini]

The main disadvantage of using Marvell controllers is that it will create the software stripes which are not bootable. But still if you want to create the Marvell stripes then you will use the disk manager to do it. Working with Marvell stripes needs extreme patience. These strips begin working very slowly. Also their processing is very slow as compared to Intel controllers. Also to add to this, using Marvell stripes on Gigabyte motherboards is not recommended. You will need to use software for it in Windows.

[Pamina]

Accelerated RAID array will create an extra partition in your disk drive. This acceleration program will create a fake RAID array to accelerate the drives. This will need the cache storage to be high. It may sound odd, but I recommend that you don’t involve Windows SSD at all.

[Gameli]

Hard disk is programmed to reserve 1024 sectors of it for purpose of alignment of drives. These reserved sectors are called clusters that are collection of multiple stripes. Total size of this cluster is 2048 Kb which will be changed when the offset is set. In NTFS storage system, the size of this cluster is 4 MB. Also while setting up a hard disk in NTFS system, it provides options to change this value. But it is not recommended to change it.