Intel Rapid Storage Technology

[S_I_N]

Because I so enjoy re-installing and updating Win 7 and all my programs

Not Really. But I wanted to see what the fuss was all about so for the next few weeks I will be seeing what its all about. For now I have a WD Black 640Gb Sata 6Gb/sec 64mb cache 7200rpm drive with my opsys and all programs installed and I'll be using one of my C300 64GB Sata 6Gb/sec SSD's as its cache. So far after 3 runs of crystal Disk Mark I have 275 reads and 75 writes. Will see how it improves over time. If there is any testing you'd like to see done and I can accommodate it please list it here and I'll report back as soon as I am able. Still installing everything as I type this lol.

Note This will be using the onboard Intel Z68 Sata 6Gb/sec controller

 

[S_I_N]

EPIC FAIL!!!!!!!!!! well finally back up and running after my IRST suffered catastrophic failure. Everything was going fine I even played about 30mins of Crysis 2 without any issues. Noticed no major difference in levels loading over my previous installs. Got out of the game and decided to finish installing other proggies like Office XP which I have never had any issues with installing or running. Well she crapped out while installing just hung on a part and wouldnt proceed. So I restarted and thats where the shite hit the fan. Kept going into repair mode. no matter what I did or tried it would not repair. I even took the ssd cache out of the equation and still no go so after several hours trying. I simple said FARK THIS!!! and redid my SSD raid 0 array. Got thru to just after installing drivers and was about to get on with updating. So I said ok this is a good time to put my storage drive back in the loop so I can dl to it. Well that was another major catastrophic failure. Seems that during the reboot omething went wrong and somehow some files from the storage drive (yes I forgot to wipe it first

) got on the ssd array

well now after pissin and moaning about it I finally have it back up and the way I want it. I will not be attempting this again anytime soon. My free time is limited abd I truely wanted to game some today lol.

 

[yassarikhan786]

That's unfortunate. If you didn't see any improvements on the loading times then there's no point in trying it again (like you said), since it caused you so many problems.

 

[Scoob]

Urgh, not good my friend!

I've been interested in this tech for a little while now, though I'd hoped I'd be able to simply add an SSD and go without a full re-install. My understanding is that the re-install is needed if your existing hdd wasn't set up in RAID mode from the start - though of course why would you if you're not using RAID eh.

Anyway, after your troubles I'm even less inclined to try this myself. I think, for me at least, it'll just be a case of fast SSD for OS, apps and games and a 2nd conventional drive for storage if needed. Thing is, having a network, I have all the storage I need so might as well keep things simple and just run an SSD. The be fair I have a Samsung 1tb drive in my gamer at the mo and I'm perfectly happy with it. If SSD's get cheaper for a half-way decent amount of storage I might buy, but I've no urge to - other than the usual "it's new STUFF" factor of course

Cheers for trying this out S_I_N.

Scoob.

 

[S_I_N]

my pleasure guys and gals

I will prolly try again in the relative future not sure why this happened but I'm going to research it thoroughly thru first. I can say this I was please with the over all performance before it crashed hard. While not fully cached at the time of crash it was looking promising, as things should of gotten faster and snappier as time went on. But before I hose my current raid again I'll get another ssd to try this with. I already have several hdds laying about so those are handy.

 

[Scoob]

my pleasure guys and gals

I will prolly try again in the relative future not sure why this happened but I'm going to research it thoroughly thru first. I can say this I was please with the over all performance before it crashed hard. While not fully cached at the time of crash it was looking promising, as things should of gotten faster and snappier as time went on. But before I hose my current raid again I'll get another ssd to try this with. I already have several hdds laying about so those are handy.

Hi S_I_N,

I'd hope your ealier trials were just a blip, though it does damage confidence somewhat. I'm encouraged that you did experience a noticable performance improvment, just a shame it all came crashing down.

I think on my motherboard (ASUS P8Z68-V Pro) there are a couple of newer BIOS updates I'd need to apply before trying this. Both updates mention this tech but, as I've not used it yet, I've not updated my BIOS as the rest of the system is running very well.

If your next venture into testing this tech results in a glowing report after many hours of stable operation I'll likely jump on board

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[reeper250]

My friend had an issue with Smart Response, and updating the BIOS helped. He used to install windows, boot up, restart after a while. Then when he booted up again, the drives were wiped. Updating the BIOS fixed this issue and he is now extremely happy with the performance.

 

[S_I_N]

I am pretty sure I am up to date on everything but will look into that as well. For now I just wanna game some lol I think I'll pop a temp hdd in and do a copy of everything on it and try again after checking I have the latest of everything. This may happen sooner than later then lol

 

[reeper250]

I am pretty sure I am up to date on everything but will look into that as well. For now I just wanna game some lol I think I'll pop a temp hdd in and do a copy of everything on it and try again after checking I have the latest of everything. This may happen sooner than later then lol

If you haven't updated the BIOS yourself you need to do that, i don't know why, it just need to be done to make ISRT work for some reason.

 

[S_I_N]

ROUND TWO!!!!!!

ok so this go round first I cloned my ssd raid to 2 different hdds lol one for testing and one for backup. No more marathon re-install session if it fails . I am back on IRST now just finished completing the steps. I did check my bios and while I was not on the latest one (I am now) there were 2 other bios's available one was for 22nm cpu support the other which stated it was a beta bios was for improved OCZ pci-e ssd support. This is the bios I am on currently.

 

[reeper250]

ROUND TWO!!!!!!

ok so this go round first I cloned my ssd raid to 2 different hdds lol one for testing and one for backup. No more marathon re-install session if it fails . I am back on IRST now just finished completing the steps. I did check my bios and while I was not on the latest one (I am now) there were 2 other bios's available one was for 22nm cpu support the other which stated it was a beta bios was for improved OCZ pci-e ssd support. This is the bios I am on currently.

That's great to hear, congratulations!

 

[S_I_N]

well I shut down to go pick up y kids from the ex and upon power-up for some reason it disabled my hdd and was trying to boot up from the ssd which is just cached files lol. needed to say it didn't work. So I took the ssd offline and the hdd had to be re enables thru the raid config utility. Once back into windows and a few restarts later I put the ssd back into the loop and now again back on accelerated IRST. Which means the ssd is back on cache duty. Don't know why it did why it did but at least this time it recovered. If it fails again like this I am thinking fark this shite. Bootup t6imes are greatly affected by this as ur booting from an hdd vs ssd but app loading seems a lil better and a lil worse depending on the app. But again this is still early in the process as it'll take several days to learn my habits and adjust accordingly. But I have seen an improvement in game page loadings. Currently testing using Crysis Warhead simply because I am about out of Crysis 2 installs every time the game isn't uninstalled deletes a activation lol. But I can say this so far scene loading does seem to be quicker on the IRST vs ssd raid. But I kinda expected it as I noted this during my WD Black raid as well. I am using other programs as well but for most of those its just the opening that one would notice improved.