Considering SSD software RAID0... [Archive]

AppleWorking

Sep 10, 2009, 03:48 PM

My boot time right now from power button to usable desktop is extremely fast with a single X25-M SSD... I was wondering if setting up a software RAID0 of two SSDs would result in a longer boot time? I mean, does it take a long time for the software RAID0 to initialize on boot up? If it will cause me to have a slower boot time because of this "initialization" then I think I'll leave well enough alone. ;) I would hate for my boot time to be twice as long, or even a little longer...

I also noticed a member here (VR) had this to say about SSD Raid0...

The bottom line is that RAID0 arrays of SSD's will not have a huge advantage in terms of every day performance because with such a large stripe size, you don't benefit from the added parallelism for small read/write operations. The key compelling reason to RAID SSD's is to combine small drives into a larger more practical volume size... not for performance although you will see added performance on sustained transfers of larger files.

This makes me believe that a SSD Raid0 really has no "holy cow" speed increase in regard to everyday use, except when it comes to large file transfers.

So, if a RAID0 of two SSDs will cause me to have a longer boot time, and it doesn't even provide a large increase in performance except in large file transfer situations, then it looks like I will save my money and forget the SSD RAID0 idea (provided all of this info is correct, I dunno).

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.

TheStrudel

Sep 10, 2009, 04:10 PM

You could use a smaller stripe size. It's an option. I don't know about longer RAID-induced initialization, but in theory if you're using an extremely small stripe, or block...you'd reap more benefit, wouldn't you?

I don't think your boot time will get longer, But I do agree with VirtualRain that your speed increase won't be a linear doubling of the single SSD's speed.

Sound reasonable?

Tesselator

Sep 10, 2009, 05:15 PM

I think it might be close to the same but I dunno for sure. With two the system has to load & initialize two units then read the stripe info from both and mount the volume. Maybe this takes 3 to 5 seconds and I guess the SSD RAID0 once mounted will be pretty close to about that much faster for booting. So it breaks even? Or not... That's just a guess. Most of the speed increase you get from booting off of SSDs is due to the low access times (latency). I guess that doesn't change too much between SSD and 2-SSD-RAID0.

I think OS X 10.5.8 reads about 1.5GB to 2GB (total data) from the drive/s before it's completely finished and all settled down. How much faster is a 2-SSD-RAID0 volume over a single SSD?

It writes a bunch too but I dunno how much. 200 MB? No idea.

What are your boot times now? Mine is currently taking 11 seconds for the grey blanket + grey apple. And another 12 seconds for it to load OS X, log-in and load about 12 to 15 start-up apps. I currently get between 21 and 24 seconds from power button push to fully loaded and waiting for clicks. Is an SSD much faster?

Another question I have is: Exactly how important is this booting time thing? I boot my machine about once a week. So that's 24 seconds a week or about 2 minutes a month. To me twice that or eliminating it all together (0 boot times) is worth about one saltine cracker (with butter) and not much more. Now, on a laptop (where SSDs shine the brightest anyway) it's worth much more! Even approaching the actual price of an SSD drive. When I was using Laptops for work (Teaching Uni) I booted up 5 to 10 times a day and slept the machine another 10 or 15 times a day. Many boots were during a conversation that pended on pertinent information on the laptop or on the net. Waiting 20 seconds for a boot in the middle of a conversation it too much to ask. :D

TheStrudel

Sep 10, 2009, 05:52 PM

For my part, I would say frequent seek hangs when using pro apps are the real reason. Boot time is icing on the cake.

gugucom

Sep 10, 2009, 06:45 PM

I havn't done any comparisons but I have been booting with a dual SSD SW RAID0 for some weeks now. It is blindingly quick. So I cannot believe that it adds time to a single SSD setup. But taking the array apart just to measure it exceeds my curiosity. Just take my word that it is not slow!

AppleWorking

Sep 11, 2009, 05:08 PM

Thanks for the replies. :) My MP right now as it is boots in about 30 sec from power button to usable desktop. I have to reboot into windows quite often thus the question. I've seen a few threads around here where peeps are complaining about a slower boot time ever since implementing a software RAID. They say it's initializing. Made me wonder... Any slower on boot and I would prefer just to leave things as is...

VirtualRain

Sep 11, 2009, 06:21 PM

Many things to add here...

Boot is not just loading a bunch of stuff off disk into memory, there's also a lot code execution that needs to happen and dependencies on other devices in your system (getting an IP address via DHCP is just one example, but there are a ton of other hardware initializations that occur). All of these things will throttle boot to some extent. Like the old saying goes... 9 women can't have a baby in 1 month... the same applies to optimizing boot performance... after a certain point, the boot process is not constrained by storage speed. Where is this point?... a single SSD, or two or three in RAID0? I'm not sure. I'm guessing that after a single top-shelf SSD, diminishing returns set in fairly quickly. Even the 24 SSD array experiment I saw on YouTube didn't boot much faster than my system.

Despite my own assertion that it doesn't add much performance, I run dual SSD's in software RAID0. I did this primarily for the benefits of a single larger volume but there may be some circumstances where I'm getting a performance boost. I certainly don't think it hurts.

Finally, you could use a smaller stripe which will boost read performance, but it can quickly kill write performance with the write-erase block penalty that comes with writing to MLC flash. Consider that on a used drive, writing just 4K of data might require an entire 512K page to be rewritten in flash. If you were using 4K stripes and had to write just 16K of data, you would effectively incur 4 write-erase penalties and 2MB of data would have been moved around in flash instead of just the 16K you needed to commit to disk.

So my advice is to just f'n give er! Go for it! :D But don't expect a doubling of performance or anything even close.

Tesselator

Sep 11, 2009, 06:25 PM

I havn't done any comparisons but I have been booting with a dual SSD SW RAID0 for some weeks now. It is blindingly quick.

How many seconds?

Thanks for the replies. :) My MP right now as it is boots in about 30 sec from power button to usable desktop.

So just a little slower than mine with no SSD at all. I'm going to take a stab and say a second SSD will not offer a noticeable increase.

AppleWorking

Sep 11, 2009, 06:32 PM

So my advice is to just f'n give er!Hey, there you are. Okay, so I'll just f'n give er. LOL And if you buy my second processor I can f'n give er real soon. ;)

I wish I knew what "f'n give er" meant. lol

VirtualRain

Sep 11, 2009, 06:49 PM

I wish I knew what "f'n give er" meant. lol

You gotta watch the movie Fubar (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302585/) to know where this comes from! It's a Canadian classic!!! :D :eek: :p

AppleWorking

Sep 11, 2009, 06:53 PM

You gotta watch the movie Fubar (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302585/) to know where this comes from! It's a Canadian classic!!! :D :eek: :pOkay, gotcha. :D

Gav2k

Sep 11, 2009, 07:50 PM

Couple of things you need to look at really. What's your hard drive controllers make and model. Find this out check it's throughput and look what your getting from your ssd. Just thinking it's sata300 won't do.

Secondly software based raid adds CPU cycles as the CPU had to deal with all data requests not a hardware chip. So you need to factor in things like additional heat and noise. Not to mention possible lag from CPU intensive apps due to the CPU being needed else where.

gugucom

Sep 11, 2009, 08:45 PM

How many seconds?

Probably 6 s EFI and 1 s for OS X. But I'm estimating by historic values. I'm putting a RAID card in which is taking much longer to go up in EFI. I'm also working on the Vista array, so I cannot have the SW OS X array in the Mac Pro.

One thing is for sure. RAID cards add a lot to boot and shut down time.

nanofrog

Sep 12, 2009, 12:12 AM

Probably 6 s EFI and 1 s for OS X. But I'm estimating by historic values. I'm putting a RAID card in which is taking much longer to go up in EFI. I'm also working on the Vista array, so I cannot have the SW OS X array in the Mac Pro.

One thing is for sure. RAID cards add a lot to boot and shut down time.
Boot yes, shutdown, not that I've ever noticed with the Areca's. I've not had any problems with it. The slowest it gets, has to do with Windows Updates occuring once the Shutdown or Restart sequence has started. :)

gugucom

Sep 12, 2009, 12:17 AM

Boot yes, shutdown, not that I've ever noticed with the Areca's. I've not had any problems with it. The slowest it gets, has to do with Windows Updates occuring once the Shutdown or Restart sequence has started. :)

I get something like 2-3 minutes or more in OS X and almost instant in Vista. Previously my OS X shut down in seconds.

Edit: I measured and it is more like 50-70 s.

fernande-mac

Sep 12, 2009, 12:18 AM

I wish I knew what "f'n give er" meant. lol

1. give'r
Function: Verb
Etymology: Canadian, particular to rural areas, especially Lanark County Ontario and most of Alberta; An amalgam of the words give and her; made popular by movie "FUBAR"
1. Going all out and/or balls to the wall to take care of business as quickly and as awesomely as possible
2. Acting in a way that is like you're rocking out really hard, but at the same time, trying to solve a problem that may or may not involve drop-kicking something without hesitation

When you're trying to get your politics paper done before the office closes and plan how you're going to get drunk later on that night, and you've only got 45 minutes left to figure out both problems, and you're so pumped up that you might drop-kick your roommate because he ate all of your peanut butter - you just give'r!

ungraphic

Sep 12, 2009, 12:52 AM

nanofrog

Sep 12, 2009, 12:52 AM

I get something like 2-3 minutes or more in OS X and almost instant in Vista. Previously my OS X shut down in seconds.
That seems really messed up to me. :(

Let me send off a few emails, and see what I get back on it. I just hope I can find someone else with an '06 model.

nanofrog

Sep 12, 2009, 12:55 AM

A simple question:

Does the software RAID0 setup with either SSDs or HDDs hamper the CPUs full performance? I've been told it eats up a bit of CPUs power......if so, does having a RAID card (that costs hundreds extra) really give a significant boost?
Not with RAID0, and the limit of drives capable of being run by the system (SATA ports on the board). Parity based RAID is another story, even on smaller drive quantities, but not impossible to do provided the software support is there (not in a MP though). ;)

You could do it with a separate SATA card and it's drivers (won't boot).

Macinposh

Sep 12, 2009, 01:24 AM

Secondly software based raid adds CPU cycles as the CPU had to deal with all data requests not a hardware chip.

The cpu useage should not be an real issue,as it is very small. Remeber seeing some charts with 0.5-1.5% useage during heavy loading.

've seen a few threads around here where peeps are complaining about a slower boot time ever since implementing a software RAID. They say it's initializing.

When I had raid10 under tiger it normally booted extremely quickly. Boot times were around 10-15s. But when I had had the system up and running for weeks,sleep bug mad me restart or there were some power failures,then the bootup times went down the *******. They were around 2 minutes or something.

Now that leopard messed up my raid array (can read/write but can not boot from it!) I have had to resort to boot from the internal sata,wich takes about a 1 1/2 minutes or so. It sucks.

AppleWorking

Sep 12, 2009, 04:15 PM

1. Going all out and/or balls to the wall to take care of business as quickly and as awesomely as possible
I like that :D

2. Acting in a way that is like you're rocking out really hard, but at the same time, trying to solve a problem that may or may not involve drop-kicking Tesselator without hesitation:eek: LOL That's a good one!

kidding :D

Dreamail

Sep 12, 2009, 04:32 PM

A bit off topic but somehow related:
I always wondered how software RAID 0 SSD boot drives cope with system crashes or power loss.

Mac OS X is quite stable, but once in a while things just hang. Photoshop is a good candidate or Flash in Safari.
In theory only the app should hang, but often I find the whole Mac Pro is gone and pressing the front button for a forced shutdown is the only way to regain control.

Same goes for sudden power losses where the Mac just goes off.

I wonder how a software RAID 0 striped boot drive will handle these scenario.
Surely at that point some files are half-written and corrupted.
What's your experience with such situations?
If the striped boot volume gets corrupted do you have to re-format the SSD and re-install from a backup?

ungraphic

Sep 12, 2009, 04:50 PM

Tesselator

Sep 12, 2009, 06:17 PM

Well, it's the same as with single drives. If the drives are writing during the crash or black-out then there will be a splat file somewhere. Some drives and OS's can know about such things and verify/erase the splat file(s) and some can't. In either case when that happens the user needs to use the Disk Utility "Repair" functions or those from some 3rd party software and scan the FAT/BAM/Whatever and the surfaces. If you're in a state that uses the fake "rolling brown outs" as a way to justify price hikes then you need to get yourself a UPS with line conditioning as the trailing edge of a power-out is pretty dangerous for computers. Imagine turning up the voltage from 114 to near 200 momentarily just before dropping it to 0 and then often bouncing it up and down once more the power zero condition. :p Definitely not good for your system.

The information that controls/links the various members of a RAID0 in Mac OS / Firmware is written to a hidden partition and AFAIK is only accessed during system startup or when the RAID is being created the first time. So no crash is going to blow away of the members' relationships leaving your RAID inoperable.

nanofrog

Sep 12, 2009, 10:54 PM

Well, it's the same as with single drives.
Exactly. No drive setup is immune.

If the drives are writing during the crash or black-out then there will be a splat file somewhere. Some drives and OS's can know about such things and verify/erase the splat file(s) and some can't. In either case when that happens the user needs to use the Disk Utility "Repair" functions or those from some 3rd party software and scan the FAT/BAM/Whatever and the surfaces.
Most of the time, the OS can try to fix itself automatically, or might require a little user intervention (warning notices, "Run .... to diagnose/fix sort of thing). But not always (Kernel corruption for example).

Most of the applications (data being written during the failure) will require some user intervention at a minimum, if not a complete recreation, depending on the apps ability to assist in recovery (i.e. auto saves help reduce the amount of work to be recreated).

...the trailing edge of a power-out is pretty dangerous for computers. Imagine turning up the voltage from 114 to near 200 momentarily just before dropping it to 0 and then often bouncing it up and down once more the power zero condition. :p Definitely not good for your system.
Yep. Fortunately, most UPS's are up to the task for this. :)

The information that controls/links the various members of a RAID0 in Mac OS / Firmware is written to a hidden partition and AFAIK is only accessed during system startup or when the RAID is being created the first time. So no crash is going to blow away of the members' relationships leaving your RAID inoperable.
In the case of GUID partition tables, it's duplicated on both the front and back of the disk. So it has a duplicate, which helps in the event damage does occur. It offers the ability to salvage the drive, and access the data on it. :)

Dreamail

Sep 12, 2009, 11:22 PM

Thanks for all answers. One can always learn something valuable from this excellent group of posters!

In the case of GUID partition tables, it's duplicated on both the front and back of the disk. So it has a duplicate, which helps in the event damage does occur. It offers the ability to salvage the drive, and access the data on it. :)
This is interesting!
Is this part of any normal Softraid RAID 0 setup?
And which software can use that duplicate GUID partition?

As you can guess from my question I am considering putting 2 SSDs via RAID 0 in my Mac Pro using as boot and main data drive. (With extra TimeMachine HD plus off-site backups of course.)

Since cost should be minimal (the drives are expensive enough) I am considering using the OSX's built-in Softraid rather than buy a dedicated RAID card. At this point I'd rather get a bigger SSD than a RAID card.

Yet I'm not sure if this setup wouldn't be too fragile compared to a normal single drive setup.

With a striped RAID my main worry would be recovering in case of a total drive disaster.
Also the likelyhood of the GUID data getting corrupted during 'normal' crashes, hard-reboots or power failures.

With a single drive you can always use some sniffer software to poke into bits on the platters. With a striped drive stuff's all over the place and sniffing for important information (which wasn't yet backed up) would seem to be a lot harder.

Tesselator

Sep 13, 2009, 12:00 AM

I like that :D

:eek: LOL That's a good one!

kidding :D

Hey! I represent that! :mad: :rolleyes: :cool:

AppleWorking

Sep 13, 2009, 12:01 AM

Hey! I represent that! :mad: :rolleyes: :cool::D

Tesselator

Sep 13, 2009, 12:06 AM

Yet I'm not sure if this setup wouldn't be too fragile compared to a normal single drive setup.

Naw, less fragile over all I would imagine. I think SSDs are less prone to total catastrophic failure than HDDs with all their moving parts.

With a striped RAID my main worry would be recovering in case of a total drive disaster.
Also the likelyhood of the GUID data getting corrupted during 'normal' crashes, hard-reboots or power failures.

That's what back-ups are for. ;) But I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it. Even with HDDs in a RAID0 the likelihood of such things happening are extremely slim!

With a single drive you can always use some sniffer software to poke into bits on the platters.

Sometimes. I wouldn't even say "usually". Seldom better describes it IMHO. And again, who cares if you have backups from just a few hours earlier? Just restore and forget about it. That's the whole idea of a back-up. ;)

nanofrog

Sep 13, 2009, 01:19 AM

Is this part of any normal Softraid RAID 0 setup?
And which software can use that duplicate GUID partition?
Yes, if you mean the OS. :)

Maybe if it's a add-in SATA card (depends on the drivers), but not usually the case if it's under a RAID card (Apple's RAID pro would be the only possible exception).

But in the case of OS X using the board's SATA ports, it is, and applies to both single drives and arrays in OS X. It's not the actual data, just a duplicate copy (backup) of the Partition Table (pointers to the location of the data). It's there to help recover in case an illegal operation occurs to the Partition Table. If it's a normal operation, the changes will be duplicated. It can't help cover bad sectors though. That's something else (remapping, and the data being salvaged isn't certain).

In any event, you want to have a good backup system in place, as Tesselator recommended. It helps with the various failures better than any other method. There really is no substitute. ;) Only additional useful aids. :p

As you can guess from my question I am considering putting 2 SSDs via RAID 0 in my Mac Pro using as boot and main data drive. (With extra TimeMachine HD plus off-site backups of course.)

Since cost should be minimal (the drives are expensive enough) I am considering using the OSX's built-in Softraid rather than buy a dedicated RAID card. At this point I'd rather get a bigger SSD than a RAID card.
It would be easy enough to set up, and you won't need a RAID card for OS X. The oddball issue is for Windows, as I'm not aware of a basic SATA card that can boot OS X (EFI firmware). Only a couple of brands of RAID cards are EFI boot capable. So if you're on a budget (or want the simplest method to install Windows), just use a single disk, as it cannot be placed on an array created by OS X.

Yet I'm not sure if this setup wouldn't be too fragile compared to a normal single drive setup.

With a striped RAID my main worry would be recovering in case of a total drive disaster.
Also the likelyhood of the GUID data getting corrupted during 'normal' crashes, hard-reboots or power failures.
No, it won't be fragile. If anything, it's a bit more stable, as there's no moving parts that can fail.

Again, a good backup will solve your worries. Now you can still loose a small amount of data, depending on the time of the most recent backup to the time of the failure, and what you were doing during that time. You'll need to figure out the best scheduling for your backups (minimal data loss, if any at all).

Of course, with RAID, a UPS really ceases to be an option, as it covers you during a write operation occuring during a power failure. You can save it, then shut down.

There's still a few odd (rare) possibilities, and that's primarily the PSU in the system. If it fails, there is no redundant unit, and when they do go, they can take other stuff with them, such as CPU's, main boards, memory, drives... Again, this is where the backup bails you out. :D

So the moral of the story is, if you're running RAID, use backups + UPS. :p

With a single drive you can always use some sniffer software to poke into bits on the platters. With a striped drive stuff's all over the place and sniffing for important information (which wasn't yet backed up) would seem to be a lot harder.
That's what the backups are for. Never leave it to data recovery software or services to obtain your data. The backup is more effective, and way cheaper if you ever have to use a data recovery service. ;)

gugucom

Sep 14, 2009, 08:05 PM

Also not to forget!!! Switch off defrag for any SSD you use in your system or it will quickly kill your SSDs by exceeding the maximum refresh cycles. Leave it to the controller to organize the SSD. Any interference from the OS will make things dramatically worse.

Tesselator

Sep 15, 2009, 12:26 AM

nanofrog

Sep 15, 2009, 12:52 AM

Is there such a switch in OS X? Is that new in SL or something?
I presume it was made as a general statement, though particularly applicable to Windows. ;) Especially since he's been working on getting an array set up with a pair of SSD's specifically for Windows. :D

ungraphic

Sep 15, 2009, 01:27 AM

Is there such a switch in OS X? Is that new in SL or something?

+1

I've always thought OS X had 'built in' defragmentation that ran in the background.....if so, how do u turn it off?

Dreamail

Sep 15, 2009, 10:24 PM

Thanks again to everyone for the really helpful answers!
:)

If there is a 'no defragmentation' switch in OS X, that would be good to know where it is. But I haven't heard there is one.
But I'm also not sure to what extent auto-defragmentation is done in the background.

Someone else mentioned to be careful with a software RAID 0 as one cannot boot into Windows with it. But that's no concern as I don't intend to do that, I'd only run XP via VMware Fusion.

TheStrudel

Sep 15, 2009, 10:31 PM

gugucom

Sep 15, 2009, 10:32 PM

Someone else mentioned to be careful with a software RAID 0 as one cannot boot into Windows with it. But that's no concern as I don't intend to do that, I'd only run XP via VMware Fusion.

Actually its a bit different. When you have a software array in OS X it will prevent you from installing a Windows drive. Once it is set up it isn't affected by the presence of an array. So booting into Windows with RAID prsent is not a problem per se.

GeneralAntilles

Sep 15, 2009, 10:39 PM

As far as I'm aware, auto-defrag happens either on reboot, or during the periodical maintenance scripts OS X runs. There is a way to disable it, but I can't remember what it is. Of course, I heard that back in the Tiger days, so I'm not sure what it is now, especially in 10.6

It happens on-the-fly based if a number of conditions are satisfied. See the section at the end of this article (http://osxbook.com/software/hfsdebug/fragmentation.html) for details.

Tesselator

Sep 16, 2009, 12:32 AM

Actually its a bit different. When you have a software array in OS X it will prevent you from installing a Windows drive.

No, you can install a windows drive and even do the split partition thing. Either one will work just as if there were no RAID0 connected at all. The one caveat is that the drive you plan to format or partition needs to be in Bay1. Bays 2 ~ 4 and the two spare SATA ports can have any type or combination of RAIDs or single drives you like.

And also just like he said, once you create and boot into Windows none of the RAIDs will mount in Windows. They appear as unprepared, unwritable, unreadable, single drives.

Also RAID (including 0, 10, and JBOD) member drives can be shuffled around without any trouble. So if you're RAID is currently in Bays 1, 2, 3, and 4 for example, you could easily put the Bay1 drive in the ODD area and the RAID would continue to function as if nothing had changed.

Macinposh

Sep 16, 2009, 01:03 AM

Also RAID (including 0, 10, and JBOD) member drives can be shuffled around without any trouble. So if you're RAID is currently in Bays 1, 2, 3, and 4 for example, you could easily put the Bay1 drive in the ODD area and the RAID would continue to function as if nothing had changed.

Wha?
So,I can take the drive from the bay1 and shove it to the ODD area and connect it to the mobo´s sata slot and the raid will still work??

gugucom

Sep 16, 2009, 09:35 AM

nanofrog

Sep 16, 2009, 12:43 PM

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-025783.htm

There is also a general issue with Intel RAID chips and Vista installation which was dealt with by some later software releases. I am experiencing something like this with my Intel IOP333 in my Areca card now.

If you use Intel matrix storage manager you need to use versions higher than 7.0. The current release it 8.9.
The newest release is stable, and I'd recommend using it. ;)

The article refers to the ICHx model in the chipset though. The ARC-1210 is a separate device, and I've not seen any instances of collision with the ICH10R on the board I'm currently using (different device addresses do seem to do their job in preventing such issues).

gugucom

Sep 16, 2009, 02:16 PM

The newest release is stable, and I'd recommend using it. ;)

The article refers to the ICHx model in the chipset though. The ARC-1210 is a separate device, and I've not seen any instances of collision with the ICH10R on the board I'm currently using (different device addresses do seem to do their job in preventing such issues).

Customer reports at Intel suggest that 8.9 is connected with unexplainable drive failures. Intel have said they recommend 8.8 and 8.9 only for Win7.

I don't know what is wrong with my IOP333, but it drives me nuts and the issue reads exactly like the one Intel had with the 5000 chipsets and the 7.0 versions.

nanofrog

Sep 16, 2009, 07:49 PM

Customer reports at Intel suggest that 8.9 is connected with unexplainable drive failures. Intel have said they recommend 8.8 and 8.9 only for Win7.

I don't know what is wrong with my IOP333, but it drives me nuts and the issue reads exactly like the one Intel had with the 5000 chipsets and the 7.0 versions.
I've only single drives attached to the ICH10R (3x 1TB Caviar Blacks for backup, and a 300GB Velociraptor meant for OS X). I've not had any problems. But it is running Win7 RC. I found it stable enough to dump Vista. Which occured as a result of MS not liking my reinstall count, and gave me the "Illegal Copy" crap. Needless to say, it pissed me off, as even after I did the phone verification, updates where still disabled. :rolleyes: :mad:

But when you select the OS, I don't recall it offering one of the Win7 versions. I'll have to go to Intel's site and take a look at that (curious, and what to confirm), and check out the user/customer posts/reports as well. ;)

gugucom

Sep 16, 2009, 08:23 PM

I have not tried Win7 yet because I did not intend to buy another Windows down the road. I may be an idea for testing if the bug is there as well.

nanofrog

Sep 16, 2009, 08:28 PM

I have not tried Win7 yet because I did not intend to buy another Windows down the road. I may be an idea for testing if the bug is there as well.
I'll check it out later this evening, and see what I come up with. :) You've definitely made me curious about this. :D

gugucom

Sep 16, 2009, 09:29 PM

nanofrog

Sep 16, 2009, 09:32 PM

I have checked out Win7-RC and rEFIt shows two images. One is rejected out of hand. It looks funny like a three dimensional symbol for Windows. That is probably for 64EFI only. The other one looks conventional but has the usual bug that makes my EFI32 freeze. Multiple load variables that the boot loader can't handle. I may have a chance to modify the iso to take the variables out, but that is a slim chance.
It also sounds like a lot of work, for something that should be rather simple. :rolleyes: :(

Man, Apple's reluctance to release 64bit EFI has really raked you over the coals on this.

Any update on the possible swap to a newer machine ('08 IIRC)?

Tesselator

Sep 16, 2009, 11:05 PM

Wha?
So,I can take the drive from the bay1 and shove it to the ODD area and connect it to the mobo´s sata slot and the raid will still work??

Yes sir. Confirmed it myself. The location doesn't matter at all. You can take them all out and put them all back in different locations including the two SATA connectors under the fan, and it will all just work. Nice huh?!?!

gugucom

Sep 16, 2009, 11:49 PM

It also sounds like a lot of work, for something that should be rather simple. :rolleyes: :(

Man, Apple's reluctance to release 64bit EFI has really raked you over the coals on this.

Any update on the possible swap to a newer machine ('08 IIRC)?

I found a solution to eliminate the undigestible variables and I'm just testing it.

http://jowie.com/blog/post/2008/02/24/Select-CD-ROM-Boot-Type-prompt-while-trying-to-boot-from-Vista-x64-DVD-burnt-from-iso-file.aspx

My previous method may have been flawed. I used to simply extract one straightforward image from the disk by use of nLite. I am aware that this has changed other aspects of my bootable installation disks. Among the noticable changes was the loss of the repair option, which I missed dearly.

So perhaps Howie's way is better for me. I had some difficulties to heck his description but now it appears that I have got it.

EDIT: I'm installing Win7-64 on my SSD RAID0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It also told me that my BIOS is not suitable but at least it started to install. It broke off in the last minute when it should have restarted the computer. Perhaps I will be able to work around that issue. I'm starting it again and will manually shut down if that is the only way to make sure it restarts.

keep the fingers crossed, please puuuuuleeezzzzeeees.

nanofrog

Sep 17, 2009, 02:36 AM

I found a solution to eliminate the undigestible variables and I'm just testing it.

http://jowie.com/blog/post/2008/02/24/Select-CD-ROM-Boot-Type-prompt-while-trying-to-boot-from-Vista-x64-DVD-burnt-from-iso-file.aspx

My previous method may have been flawed. I used to simply extract one straightforward image from the disk by use of nLite. I am aware that this has changed other aspects of my bootable installation disks. Among the noticable changes was the loss of the repair option, which I missed dearly.

So perhaps Howie's way is better for me. I had some difficulties to heck his description but now it appears that I have got it.

EDIT: I'm installing Win7-64 on my SSD RAID0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It also told me that my BIOS is not suitable but at least it started to install. It broke off in the last minute when it should have restarted the computer. Perhaps I will be able to work around that issue. I'm starting it again and will manually shut down if that is the only way to make sure it restarts.

keep the fingers crossed, please puuuuuleeezzzzeeees.
Keep us posted, if you don't mind.

Good luck. :)

HkyNC

Sep 20, 2009, 09:40 PM

FYI - I have two SSDs in a June 09 MBP set up in a RAID 0. My boot time from turning on to having the list of IDs is 16 seconds. Working in VMware Fusion and suspending a 60GB Windows 2003 Server image takes about 20-25 seconds. My drives are Corsair P256 (Samsung technology, 256GB each). Still running Leopard, although doing upgrade tomorrow.

Couldn't be happier, although I wonder about tinkering with the block size (currently using 32k). Don't know if I would have the same performance with a single drive, but having the RAID 0 gives double the space without thinking of what to put on which drive.

Update: Sorry this is not the right forum for the hardware, but seems to be on topic.