Raid0 to AHCI

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01101001

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
102
I'm moving from a pr of Crucial C-300s in raid0 to a single Samsung 840 Pro
and seem to have hit a snag. Google was not helpful.

The C300's ran with the Intel RST 11.7 drivers and I am attempting to get the
Samsung running in ACHI. (I restored a Macrium image to the Samsung.)

Nothing I have done so far will allow me into Windows with the BIOS Sata mode
set to anything but RAID.

I've uninstall the intel drivers and enabled ACHI in the registry, no joy.

I'm hoping someone here can recommend a solution other than a reinstall.

Btw, the Samsung's performance is about half of its rated speed: 285 read / 269 write
running on the Intel drivers. That's a bit of an issue!
 
The C300's were my boot drive. I physically removed them before I did anything. I figured
I'd keep them intact as a precaution.

My mb is an ASUS P6X58D with a i7 970.

Thank you!
 
01101001 said:
The C300's were my boot drive. I physically removed them before I did anything. I figured
I'd keep them intact as a precaution.

My mb is an ASUS P6X58D with a i7 970.

Thank you!
Click to expand...

If you wanted to just image them, it would have been easiest to just keep them connected as the boot drive, and use drive imaging software to move the info over to the Samsung drive. It should see the array as a single drive.
 
I've imaged the C-300 raid regularly. It was the latest image that I restored
<to> the Samsung, after removing the C-300's. That should be identical to
a drive-to-drive copy since the data is the same..

The Samsung is up and running via the image ... but not in ACHI. However it will
not get me to Windows if the Bios SATA mode is in ACHI. Thus the dilema.
 
Put the SSD on the Marvell SATA3 controller. Put the Intel controller in AHCI. Boot into windows, install AHCI drivers if necessary. Put the SSD back on the Intel controller.

Done.
 
This has a link to one of those Microsoft "Fix It" things that never works, and some reg hacks that I remember having to use when going from AHCI to RAID (expect in reverse).
 
You can also use single drives while the controller is set to RAID mode. It just loads a different BIOS, it is not different from the drive's point of view. There should be no significant performance differences.
 
Thanks Aesma, I'll try that this afternoon. That trick would never have occurred to me.

Thanks Fooshnik, I did enable ACHI in the registry, but the article you pointed me to says
that atapi also needs to be enabled. I hadn't read that before, but its worth a try if the controller
switcheroo doesn't work for me.

omniscence, the controller is set to RAID now (which is the only way I can get into Windows) and
you are right, there *should* be no performance difference (other than a slightly longer boot) ... yet the Samsung is seriously under-performing. Hopefully this is a driver issue and not a device issue.

I will report back. Thanks again.
 
Well, I decided to try the atapi reg fix first. I set it to 0 in the registry, rebooted,
& set the SATA mode to AHCI. Windows loaded and began installing new drivers.
Now the Samsung is running in AHCI mode as are the internal HDDs. That's the good news.

I now have a 'Safely Remove Hardware...' icon sitting in my systray. That's neither good nor
bad, its just ... distracting and useless.

Now the bad news. The Samsungs performance still sucks. AS-SSD reports 269 read,
258 write & 28 4K. Score= 669. Dang! So I opened Samsung Magician and immediately noticed
this under the 'Disk Drive' section > SATA Interface':

"Your SSD will not give maximum performance because your system does not support SATA 6Gb/s
(SATA3) port."

I certainly didn't notice that when the Samsung was runniing in Raid mode. The drive IS on the
Intel SATA3 port so why its "not supported" now is just baffling.
 
01101001 said:
I've imaged the C-300 raid regularly. It was the latest image that I restored
<to> the Samsung, after removing the C-300's. That should be identical to
a drive-to-drive copy since the data is the same..

The Samsung is up and running via the image ... but not in ACHI. However it will
not get me to Windows if the Bios SATA mode is in ACHI. Thus the dilema.
Click to expand...

Thank you for making that clear, I did not understand that before.
 
01101001 said:
Well, I decided to try the atapi reg fix first. I set it to 0 in the registry, rebooted,
& set the SATA mode to AHCI. Windows loaded and began installing new drivers.
Now the Samsung is running in AHCI mode as are the internal HDDs. That's the good news.

I now have a 'Safely Remove Hardware...' icon sitting in my systray. That's neither good nor
bad, its just ... distracting and useless.

Now the bad news. The Samsungs performance still sucks. AS-SSD reports 269 read,
258 write & 28 4K. Score= 669. Dang! So I opened Samsung Magician and immediately noticed
this under the 'Disk Drive' section > SATA Interface':

"Your SSD will not give maximum performance because your system does not support SATA 6Gb/s
(SATA3) port."

I certainly didn't notice that when the Samsung was runniing in Raid mode. The drive IS on the
Intel SATA3 port so why its "not supported" now is just baffling.
Click to expand...

Do you have all the chipset driver updated? Also as dumb as it sounds some mobos allow you to toggle ports in 3GB/6GB mode even though it is backwards compatible.
 
EDIT:

The sucky Marvel controller is SATA6, the Intel controller is SATA3 on this mb. Still there shouldn't be the
performance hit I'm seeing. The C300s in RAID gave me an AS-SSD score of 853. Grrr.

I'll look into chipset driver updates, but I'm pretty sure I'm ok there. Once I get rid of his headache (LOL)
I'll see if there is a toggle on this board though I don't recall such a thing.

2 aspirins ... stat!.
 
I think the performance is about right, because the Marvel SATA3 ports (supposedly 6 Gbps), is only on a PCI 1x bus, so thats the limit. The Intel ports are SATA2 (3 Gbps), so they will have a lower showing in benchmark programs. My suggestion and the general consensus would be to put them on the Intel SATA2 controllers and leave them alone and don't worry about bench numbers unless the system is having issues.
 
I'm not sure why you changed, a RAID0 of C300 will always beat a single SSD on a SATA2 controller.
 
I guess I flubbed in not understanding the limitations of the Intel controller -- and thinking (assuming) the
single Samsung would 'equal' the c300 Raid in reads but beat it in writes. Not the 1st time I've been wrong. :D

Aesma, my reasoning was to replace the 2yr old C300s with a fast new single drive then re-purpose the
C300s. It would also have satisfied that itch to upgrade we all suffer from. In addition, tho it hasn't happened recently my funky mb had dropped the RAID a couple of times out of the blue (easily recovered) so I thought it time for a change.

Now I shall ponder what to do -- keep the Samsung in or return to the C300s. On the bright side, its been a fun adventure.

Thanks to everyone for your assistance!
 
If you have other uses for the C300s and real world performance of the Samsung satisfies you (as it should most people), then I wouldn't sweat it. Especially since you mention trouble with the RAID0.
 
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