migrating to ssd from HDD + Raid

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slunge

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 1, 2003
Messages
216
Hi All

ive just bought myself an amd 6850 to upgrade my old 4850, and a new ssd to move my OS on to.

Currently, i have 3x hdd's (3 500gb WD 7200), one as the os drive, and the other two as a raid1 mirror for storing music, data etc.

I intend to switch out the single hdd, and leave the raid1 mirror as is for storage and redundancy.

I have read that with ssd's (i just bought the 120gb OCZ vertex 2e 280mb/sec edition) you need to run as achi, problem is that my motherboard (asus p5q) only has options for ide, ahci, raid - and due to the raid1 mirror, its currently set to raid.

is there anything i need to know about making this move, i intend to clone the OS disk and move direct on to the ssd, cant see how i can change to ahci without losing my raid1 mirror - but need to support the ssd functions (trim etc).

Any pointers would be handy.

Cheers
 
Hi!

I've just did a migration similar to what you're planning. Mine was a bit more complicated, but to cut it short now I've got a Corsair F60 with win7 installed and RAID5 array of 3x1TB Seagate 7200.12 HDDs.
And it works pretty great. I've just did an AS SSD benchmark and scored 336 while running win7!

My P5K Pro is the older brother of your P5Q, the BIOS options are mostly the same anyway. So to answer your question you can leave the SATA setting on RAID, just like I did.

Unfortunately, I've got a different problem. I can't boot from my SSD straightaway. On every cold boot I have to wait for the system to tell me to select/insert a proper boot device etc. and then ctrl+alt+del, otherwise my SSD wouldn't show up after the restart.
My SATA timeout is set to 35 seconds (max) and I don't know what else I can do.
My board has 4+2 SATA ports and I use the first 4 with the SSD plugged into 0 and the 3 HDDs into 1-2-3. I also have an LG combo and a Pioneer DVD-RW on the IDE port. Floppy drive is turned off in the BIOS.
As for the major HWs: P6700 cpu, MSI GTX 460 768 OC, ASUS EHD2-100 tuner (PCIe).
All that on a CoolerMaster Real Power M620 modular PSU.
The drives are installed on top of each other so I connected them to one power cable with 4 ports. I also tried connecting the SSD on a separate one but no luck.

I hope someone can figure out something to fix this annoying problem.

Thanks in advance and merry christmas!
 
slunge said:
, i intend to clone the OS disk and move direct on to the ssd,
Click to expand...

I wouldn't recommend cloning a HD to an SSD as it may cause problems with the alignment of the SSD which can cause serious performance issues. You can't treat an SSD completely like a normal HD unfortunately.

A clean Win7 install will set proper alignment and do several other OS changes specific to SSD's that a cloning may or may not not do. OS's other than Win7 will also not know how to treat an SSD properly by turning off things like Defrag and disabling Superfetch and Readyboost.

If you do try to clone, and manage to keep the alignment set properly somehow, you'll need to verify those OS changes manually. Some clone programs claim to handle it fine, but I've run into nothing but issues on all the SSD's I've installed for myself, family and friends. Only clean installs have gone flawlessly, and is normally the recommended method.

Might want to read up here as a new SSD owner, some good info to have.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

And to verify your SSD alignment is set properly if you do try the clone method...

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157
 
Unfortunately, I've got a different problem. I can't boot from my SSD straightaway. On every cold boot I have to wait for the system to tell me to select/insert a proper boot device etc. and then ctrl+alt+del, otherwise my SSD wouldn't show up after the restart.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you installed the OS on your SSD without removing all other drives and now your boot sector is on a different drive other than the SSD.

If you start your own thread someone may be able to help you with a fix.

Ho-Ho-Ho! :D
 
well, turns out looking at the above links, my ssd isnt aligned ; (

Im in two minds, as to manually aligning the partition using gparted, and manually disabling readyboost, defrag etc - or plain just reinstalling (pain in the arse for some application reinstalls...)

If i could somehow backup program file folders, and reinstate them in the new program files folders on a fresh install, i think that would be the way to go - dont think its a possibility.

that being said, my old c drive is still intact on the original hdd so theres not a great deal of harm in trying it out.
 
Old Hippie said:
...your boot sector is on a different drive other than the SSD....
Click to expand...

Nah, the partitions available at the time of install are all replaced by now. The boot data is on the SSD. The error message I get is from the BIOS loader not windows. Otherwise the system works flawlessly on a proper second start. That's why I can't figure out what is wrong on every first try, because the systems stability and performance is excellent afterwards.
 
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