Date:
Monday , July 06, 2009
Category:
Stuff / Miscellaneous
Manufacturers:
Corsair
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett

SSD RAID scaling under Windows 7

What can you expect when you get your new Windows 7 install working with those crisp new solid state hard drives? SSD drives are not what they used to be already. And just how is that Intel ICH10R chipset serving you?

Introduction

Most of the time when we start a new article here at the [H] it goes pretty much as planned with the new hardware beating the old stuff by some margin. Sometimes articles take on a whole new shape as your results don’t line up with expectations. Even the technology being tested can improve in the short time between the start of an article and its publication. Working with cutting edge technology it is always a little tricky knowing if the results you’re seeing are valid or some aberration from drivers or hardware incompatibility. SSDs are the prime example. Anyone looking to purchase an SSD should know that the technology behind these drives is progressing at such a fast pace that what was a practical knowledge yesterday is out of day by tomorrow.

In case you don’t know where I am going with this let me be frank. When this article was conceived it was to be an informative article for both newcomers and enthusiasts to the world of SSDs. What steps were needed to properly set up your new SSD as well as how to get the very most performance from your drive. As mentioned before, the technology behind SSD has progressed so quickly that much of the information out on the web is on the verge of being obsolete, save for some older SSDs.

For today's article we are going to show you guys what a lot of you can expect when you jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon and slap together some RAID-0 SSD awesomeness with a sprinkle of the Intel ICH10R Southbridge aka x58 chipset. Just for good measure we are going to toss in some charts when running a dedicated RAID card to see what, if any, boost can be expected from such a setup.

Article Image

We are pairing four Corsair P256 with the Intel ICH10R Southbridge to see how far we can push it and then for good measure we’ll include the Highpoint RocketRAID 4310 RAID card to see if we can unlock more performance.

How far can we go and will we run into a wall are two of the questions we hope to answer for you guys today.