Has anyone a suggestion of a stable ((Raid 0) 2*1TB M550 SSD) platform, G750JS?

[us18x]

Hello Everyone,
This is the first time I put a system on raid and I been snooping everywhere for information that would lead of a stable platform of my new G series laptop but no luck... I am planning to set up windows 7 ultimate 64 bit and haven't had luck with correct numbers for the stripe size and cluster size.
Would you set up your machine on Raid 0 if you have two 1TB SSDs? if not then should I just stick with the separate partitions like I did in the past or not? notice that I am doing this for the sake of highest possible performance of games and for sure future games.

My upgrades so far:

2* 1TB SSD Crucial M550
4* 4GB Kingston Non-ECC 2133MHz 204-Pin CL12 Unbuffered SODIMM
1* Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth HMC

[us18x]

Help is needed if anyone has his laptop setup on raid 0, Thank you.

[RayGobot]

I don't know how much performance gain you'd have running your drives in RAID0. And from a data security point of view, if something happens to one drive, you've lost everything. I have 2x 1TB drives in my G750, but they're separate. I have my OS and applications on the main drive, and all my games and other stuff on the 2nd drive, and that seems to work just fine for my game load times.

[pokerface]

Here is a thread that shows that running SSDs on RAID 0 will actually bring your 4K speeds a bit lower and 4K speeds are what matters most for OS snapiness / speed = http://www.overclock.net/t/1500862/1-single-ssd-vs-2-ssd-raid-0

sequential scores will increase indeed, but those will only benefit you under certain scenarios / workloads

a typical or even a power user will not benefit from RAID it will only hurt your boot time and system snapiness

[us18x]

Fair enough... Thanks guys

[pokerface]

most welcome, if you see my system specs, I tried RAID 0 and quickly came back running to a single SSD setup and used my other SSD for storing my software setup files, etc.

I could immediately feel the slowness in loading and benchmarks show 4K speeds on a single SSD are surprisingly higher than on RAID

the only benchmark RAID excels is sequential reads/right which aren't what usually happens in a day to day normal gamer environment unless all you do is copy hundreds of 10+ GB files from one partition to the other which I doubt 😉

[hmscott]

us18x wrote:
Hello Everyone,
This is the first time I put a system on raid and I been snooping everywhere for information that would lead of a stable platform of my new G series laptop but no luck... I am planning to set up windows 7 ultimate 64 bit and haven't had luck with correct numbers for the stripe size and cluster size.
Would you set up your machine on Raid 0 if you have two 1TB SSDs? if not then should I just stick with the separate partitions like I did in the past or not? notice that I am doing this for the sake of highest possible performance of games and for sure future games.

My upgrades so far:

2* 1TB SSD Crucial M550
4* 4GB Kingston Non-ECC 2133MHz 204-Pin CL12 Unbuffered SODIMM
1* Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth HMC

us18x, I would suggest trying the RAID0 and test the performance on single SSD and RAID0 yourself. Why not? You have the hardware and the opportunity. 🙂

pokerface's personal experience may not be indicative of RAID0 in general. Even the link pokerface shared has plenty of good to say about RAID0.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1500862/1-single-ssd-vs-2-ssd-raid-0

It is up to the hardware involved, and results can vary, trying it out for yourself will let you know for sure. All you will waste is time if it doesn't work as hoped, but if it does work as expected then it will be worth it 🙂

The G750 hardware RAID0 is great, but that is a hardware implementation, and offers tweaks based on hardware cache., Here are the differences between no cache (default), and write-back cache using the Intel RAID software:

no cache - default


write-back cache


You might try downloading the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software and installing it and see if it will let you tune the cache settings.

I am still running 12.9.0.1001, but there are newer versions available:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&FamilyId=42&ProductID=2101&ProdId=2101









I don't think I have seen anyone with a JM/JS/JZ report results from RAID0 with 2 2.5" SSD's yet. Make sure the 2nd bay also connects at 6gb/sec, same as the Bay1 SATA - if one or the other only connects at 3gb/sec that will slow down the RAID0.

Make sure you back up your C partition regularly - at least the stuff you don't want to lose should a RAID0 failure occur - but I haven't had a RAID0 failure for years now - the link says the same - 3 years and still no failure - more like 7 years for me, but it can happen so make sure to backup!

There haven't been too many with 1TB SSD drives to try RAID0, so do us all a favor and try it, and report back here 🙂