Two Kingston SSD Question

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conductor

n00b
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Jan 9, 2010
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Hi Folks,

I've just installed 2 Kingston V-Series 128gb ssd's in my alienware area-51 m9750 and then installed Windows 7 64-bit. I noticed when I went to my c/drive properties it shows only 1 drive with a storage capacity of 119gb. My question is: Can I somehow utilize both ssd's for storage on my c/drive when they're in ide?? I did try to enable raid in my bios only to find that windows wouldn't boot due to the fact that these particular ssd's apparently aren't raid compatible. As you can no doubt guess, I would really like to have and be able to use the full storage capacity of both ssd's. Any helpful answers to this question (particularily if it's a workable solution :)) would be most appreciated...!!

TIA
conductor
 
Set BIOS to ahci or sata compatible / ide mode to get two individual drives. This will amount to C:\ + D:\. Otherwise, you need drives that can support RAID in FW.
 
Does Kingston say they are not raid comatible, or is that just an inference on your part? Are both of the drives recognized in the BIOS? If so, it's likely that Windows just isn't recognizing the second drive because there is no partition table yet. If that is the case, you need to go back into the Windows 7 installer (you dont need to reinstall windows), and go to "repair" and get into the command prompt. Type:

list disks
select disk # (where # is the number of the unrecognized SSD)
erase
create partition align = 64
exit

Then close the installer and reboot. Windows will now see the drive. Also, if you set these drives up in raid 0, there should be ~256gb of space.
 
Thanks Guys,

I discovered that these ssd's do support raid. I just didn't realize that when you enable raid in the bios you have to be quick on the draw with ctrl I when the splash screen appears during reboot to set up the raid configuration for the drives. Through a lot of trial and error I am now set up with raid 0. Now I'll just have to wait and see how everything performs over time...I have just one more question regarding the ssd's: Should I lower the paging file size for these drives??

Cheers
conductor
 
I simply remove the page file completely myself. I have 6GB of RAM and have yet to have any issues with it. (Been doing it for months.)

But it's "not recommend"........though again, I have yet to have issues. *shrug*
 
I have 4gb of ram but for some strange reason only 2.75gb of it is available for my usage. Therefore I thought it may be better to just dial the paging file down a bit....Any thoughts??
 
conductor said:
I have 4gb of ram but for some strange reason only 2.75gb of it is available for my usage. Therefore I thought it may be better to just dial the paging file down a bit....Any thoughts??
Click to expand...

Move to Windows 7 x64, or your favorite x64 Linux distribution.
 
conductor said:
I have 4gb of ram but for some strange reason only 2.75gb of it is available for my usage. Therefore I thought it may be better to just dial the paging file down a bit....Any thoughts??
Click to expand...

You need a 64-bit operating system, asap. Also, reducing the size of the page file probably will not reduce how many writes are written to the drive, and hence it will do nothing. I'd either leave the page file alone, or turn it off completely (but only with at least 4gb of useable ram).

Take home advice: just leave it alone.
 
I am running windows 7 64-bit. I am curious though if anyone knows how long it might take for the ssd's to show noticable degradation in performance...?? Unfortunately the kingston v-series ssd's don't support trim and after having spoken with a kingston tech, apparently no trim firmware is ever going to be offered for the v-series drives...:-(

As far as the ram is concerned, this computer does have 2 nvidia m8700 graphics cards so I guess whatever ram they're using along with what the system is using, it's not too surprising that 1.25gbs is unavailable to me...
 
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