Best RAID setup for MSI Z77A-G43

I currently have my desktop set up with an SSD as C: and 2 x 1TB HDD as D: in a RAID 1 configuration.
I'd like to add a second SSD to increase capacity of my C: drive. Ideally I'd like to set both SSDs at RAID 0. Would this be possible without having to rebuild the OS? Alternatively, could I configure them as JBOD without affecting the current installation?
Any help would be appreciated.
David.

Quote
I'd like to add a second SSD to increase capacity of my C: drive. Ideally I'd like to set both SSDs at RAID 0. Would this be possible without having to rebuild the OS?
don't think so, you have to combine them both and format after that before use it

Similar Messages

Creating the best RAID setup for my MacPro using FCP

I have a MacPro, 2 x 3GHz Dual Core, 16GB ram, 4 x 500GB drives and I work in FCP 5.1.4 and with my Hardware setup I feel it should be faster and I've been wanting to set up a RAID but not sure how to do it, or the best way way to do it.
Out of the 4 drives I have, Drive one is my main drive (boot drive, apps etc.) Drives (2 & 3) which is a TB combined, I'd like to turn those into a RAID) to speed up rendering, editing etc. In FCP and Motion. Drive 4 is where I keep all my working files.
My files are backed up regularly onto external harddrives and kept offsite.
Can I leave everything I have on my entire system the way it is and just turn Drives 2 & 3 into a RAID that's best for this application? People who work in VIDEO I know do this all the time to speed things up but I can't find the steps for the best way to do this. Bits and pieces all over the place but I can't put this puzzle together.
Can you point me in the direction in how to do this?
As I'm doing this is there anything I should be careful about?
Please help me understand this process.
Just in case you need to know what kind of drives I have here's the info:
Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: ST3500641AS P
Revision: 3.BTA
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Bay Name: "Bay 1"
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Startup Drive:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 367.86 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /

My advice would be 'yes' to what you are saying... with the exception of the Softraid stuff - not that I think its wrong, but I've never used it, so I can't comment if you need it or whether the Mac OSX raid is sufficient - but others here say they prefer it so fair enough. You can see some comparisons here http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/softraid/351/
amug always have indepth benchmarks of stuff.
I wouldnt call myself an FCP guru, but I think that your suggestion of putting the FCP scratch disk and client, video files on the raid are the best idea. The scratch folder is essentially where the temp-rendered clips go, so its audio and video - you want that folder to be on a really fast volume. You also want your source video files to be on a really fast volume, so they can be streamed fast enough to play in realtime too when playing unrendered areas, or building a preview.
Some might say in FCP you get bast performance when your scratch disks and video files are on seperate disks. Thats totally true, so it can read from one disk and write to the other at the same time. But in your case you have a 3disk stripe, which is roughly 3x faster than either of your disks! So it would still be faster to have them all on the same stripe.
You can leave your FCP app on the sys drive, keeps things cleaner (drive1 for sys and appsm raid for data). You can keep your project files where ever you want, they're not very big and are kept in memory so dont affect performance at all. Though to stay clean I would keep it on the raid, so again the raid is for data, and you can back it up accordingly. The system drive is only for apps and system so you can back that up accordingly too (less frequently probably).
P.S. Technically your 'point 8' is inaccurate. After creating the raid you will not see drives 2,3 or 4. You will see only one 'volume' for all 3 drives. Overall your mac will have 2 'volumes': the system drive, and the stripe of 2,3,4. Physical drives and 'volumes' that mount in your OS are completely seperate. You can create multiple partitions in a single drive, or you can combine multiple drives into a single volume (e.g. using raid). But basically yes, you copy your client files back to the raid.
And remember, if any ONE of the disks in the stripe dies, you lose ALL of the data on the entire 1.5TB volume. So it is pretty important to backup regularly!!!!
(I dont wanna confuse you any more, but raid5 is a good option if you want more security and don't mind paying extra :P, you'll need more hardware for that, and more drives to make it worthwhile - but I would say skip that for now, as you can build your raid0 for free or almost free and use that until you think you need more)

Best RAID setup for Home Directories

Hi there,
I'm looking to upgrade our existing infrastructure which is 5 or 6 years old. We have an old Xserve RAID which has 4x 250Gb disks in a RAID 5 configuration which gives about 640Gb of storage for home directories. However the peak number of users has shot up to something like 85.
I want to be able to increase the storage space for home users but also to provide a RAID storage solution that has optimised performance for the number of users we now have.
Is there any kind of ratio or guideline to the kind of configuration/system I should be looking at? Can anyone offer any advice?
It's a gigabit ethernet network, so obviously I realise that performance is limited by that also.
Any help much appreciated.

OK, that helps a lot.
The CPU load on the server seems a little higher than I'd expect. What's the activity level of the RAID? Are the disks continually active? Are the fiber channel activity lights (the vertical columns of LEDs in the middle) all active?
That will help track the issue to the host system or the RAID.
If the disk activity lights are always busy then it may be an issue with the number of drives for the number of users, and more physical drives would help.
This could also be indicative of a too-full volume (RAID 5 volumes will degrade in performance over about 85% full. At 95% full performance may be excruciatingly slow).
If the fiber channel activity levels are high then the problem is the amount of disk access and your best bet would be to expand to the other half of the array (this will double the available fiber channel bandwidth between the host and the RAID).
If the RAID activity levels aren't high then it could be a network bottleneck on the server, in which case link aggregation could help - it isn't just for redundancy, it will load balance client traffic over the links, effectively increasing performance for clients.
You are right that if you try to expand the current volume with drives, the drives will be sized to 250GB, regardless of their physical capacity. For this reason you would need to build a new array on the other side of the RAID and copy the data over.
The ideal situation would be 14 new drives which you could build into two 7-disk arrays which are then striped on the host system.

Best RAID setup for me?

Hi
Harm has advised me - and everybody else - to go RAID! So I am about to investigate a bit before I take the big step...
My MOBI supports (according to website) RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. I think - after reading a lot about it - that I could be tempted to chioose RAID 10 - I have 2 1,5 TB disks allready - so I thought about buying another two with same size and set it up as RAID 10 - because as Wikipedia says:
RAID 10
RAID 1+0 (or 10) is a mirrored data set (RAID 1) which is then striped (RAID 0), hence the "1+0" name. A RAID 1+0 array requires a minimum of four drives – two mirrored drives to hold half of the striped data, plus another two mirrored for the other half of the data. In Linux, MD RAID 10 is a non-nested RAID type like RAID 1 that only requires a minimum of two drives and may give read performance on the level of RAID 0.
What about that? Good or bad? I don´t know if my MOBO supports 1+0 or is 1+0 and 10 the same thing?
This is my MOBO: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard& ProductID=2988&ProductName=GA-EX58-UD4
Morten

Bryan and Morten,
Can you please provide me with a link how to do the softmod on GTS250? I'm not into posiiton to purchase GTX285 at the moment so, I'll give the 'soft mod' option a shot before I decide which to upgrade first - the GPU or the 6 gigs of RAM i have in my system.
My misfortunes with Adobe/AVCHD are the exact same ones experienced by Morten - even a sinle layer of avchd content in the timeline stutters in both the source monitor and the outcome monito in CS4 and is pain to edit for that reason. Try to add a single video effect (like colour correction) or even a signle transition and ... oh, boy! the editing becomes hell and I start feeling sorry that I did not go for Canon HV40 camcroder that shoots HDV on those good old casettes.
Back to your question Bryan regarding the allocation of hdd - this is the advice I got from Harm on the topic. Also included here is advice on which drives to set in Raid 0 in priority order. Hope this helps:
System with 3HDD
C: OS & programs
D: page file, media cache and renders/previews plus miscellaneous
E: media and exports
System with 4HDD
C: OS & programs
D: Windows page file and renders/previews plus miscellaneous
E: original media
F: media cache and exports
Alternative suggestion:
C: OS & Apps
D: pagefile, temp files (Windows), miscellaneous and exports.
E: media
F: projects and rendered/scratch files
Which to put first on Raid 0?
1. Media cache and renders/previews is useful to put first if you do a lot of scrubbing and previewing.
2. That leaves media in the middle.
3. Exports would be last on my list to put on the raid. Export is a one-way street and time is not really critical.

Is MSI Z77A-G43 a good board? For Ivy Bridge?

Is MSI Z77A-G43 a good board? I have read few problems posted here in the forum. Obviously majority of users use it just fine?
Is the mobo good for Ivy Bridge? I don't see Ivy Bridge listed here http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z77A-G43.html#/?div=CPUSupport

Yes the Z77 supports Ivy Bridge. The CPU support list is not quite up to date as as the time there were no CPUs available, they were supposed to launch April 23rd but have been delayed until some time in June as far as I know.

MSI Z77A-G43 and mixed drive types

Hi,
I have an own-built desktop using a MSI Z77A-G43 motherboard. The OS boots from an SSD but all documents, media, etc, are stored on 2x1TB HDDs, configured as RAID.
However, having performed a benchmark on my SSD I'm finding that it's speed is half what it should be. It's connected to the SATA 3 connector on the MB.
I'm wondering if the issue is that, because of the RAID drives, I have the SATA mode as RAID in the BIOS. Is it falling back to IDE for non-RAID drives? Is there a way to force it to use AHCI?
Any thoughts/help on this would be greatly appreciated.
David.

Well, checking you manual will clear up your confusion. SATA 3 is the connector number while SATA III is a terminology for SATA 6GB/s. Some say just SATA 3 meaning SATA III but that's just wrong terminology. The SATA 3 connector and all others but SATA 1 & 2 are 3GB/s (1-22 of the manual by the way)

MSI Z77A-G43 - extreme memory profile problem

Hello everyone,
I’d really appreciate a piece of help here. I’ve bought the MSI motherboard MSI Z77A-G43 and currently I’m having problems with my memory (slots 1 and 3). My PC has following specs:
-   MSI Z77A-G43
-   Intel Core i5 2500K (not overclocked)
-   RAM Patriot 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 (PGD38G1600ELK) G2 Series
Everything is set to default values and works fine. But when I enter the BIOS, I see that the memory is automatically set to 1333 MHz. The memory has the XPM. But when I set the XPM (agressive timing, 1600 MHz) support (no other changes) and reboot the PC, it doesn’t work (endless reboot looping). Is there any way how I can make the XPM modus work? The memory is OK (tried on other MBs, XPM without problems), the CPU too. I tried overclocking, with slightly increased voltage I can easily reach 4,8 GHz on CPU, basically everything else is fine. The PSU is also sufficient (700W, OCZ). I can too set the memory on 1600 MHz manually, but the timing isn’t that good.
It’s actually a failure I can live with, but since it’s a brand new PC, I’d like to get the best out of it.
Many thanks
V.K.

Sometimes manually setting them works when XMP refuses to.
I don't know what the XMP SPD profile for that memory is, and a screenshot of your SPD and memory tabs would help.
However try the following.
Disable XMP and reboot so they are back at 1333.
Manually set it to 1600 and ensure manual setting of the timings to 9.9.9.24 see if that works.
If not set your DRAM voltage to 1,575V and see if that works.
It may be that your memory requires 1,65V, in which case, that is what you have to set. You should be able to see that in CPU-Z SPD tab under the XMP profile column.

Black screen at boot MSI Z77A-G43 with HD7850

Hi,
I've tried everything You suggested in this topic. I've upgrade and downgrade bios (official 2.3, 2.4, 2.8, 2,9 / beta 256, 281,296) few times but still is black screen at boot. Now i'm on the newest beta bios 296 and still same issue on Sapphire HD 7850 with my Z77a-G43 board. I know for sure that sapphire working well because I've checked on other mobo with even worst PSU (400W instead 550W Volcano). Before hd 7850 I had gtx460 and swith those few times and always gtx460 works fine, so I don't understand anything right now.
Tried different slots, also clear cmos.
Board: MSI Z77A-G43
Bios: Version 296
VGA: Sapphire HD7850 1GB
PSU: Modecom Volcano 550W
Intel Core i5-3570k
MEM: Kingston 4GB 1600MHz
HDD: 2xSSD
Without OC
OS: Windows 7 64bit Professional
Can You help me somehow, maybe I did not check something else?

Quote from: The CPU Whisperer on 22-April-13, 16:06:05
Do you see the same problem on bios 2.90?
The Z77A-G43 seems the have difficulties accepting HD7xxx AMD VGA cards lately.
It seems that the problem is gone. I thought of it being an ATI driver issue ~ but not even the latest didn't fix it. But since I flashed to BIOS 2.9 I haven't encountered the problem anymore. So I believe something is fixed between 2.3 to 2.9.
However my problem was a bit different that the OP has.
Oh, and I said this on other thread so I say it here too: MSI and Asus 7xxx cards haven't faced the kind of issues Sapphires are having. I'm so glad to my choice... as I almost picked Sapphire but then read comments on Newegg which weren't in favor for Sapphire.

Three beeps when booting new computer with MSI Z77A-G43 Mobo

I just built this pc and pressed the power button. Nothing happens for a few seconds and then I hear 3 beeps from the PC speaker. It powers off by itself and opens again, with 3 beeps again, and repeats this until i press the power button to close it down forcefully.
Board: MSI Z77A-G43
Bios: I am not sure, but the box says Click BIOS II
VGA: MSI 7850 Twin Frozr III
PSU: Corsair Builder 600W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor LGA 1155
MEM: Corsair
HDD: 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Black
COOLER: CoolMaster Hyper 212 EVO
OC: none

3 beeps is a memory failure!
try each stick in slot 2 individually as you may possibly have a bad stick?
if the first suggestion doesn't work remove the CPU and check the socket as you may have a bent pin in there causing the issue?

I bought a MSI Z77A-G43 and 1st PCIE(3.0 I guess) slot doesn't work?

I bought a MSI Z77A-G43 and 1st PCIE (3.0 I guess) slot doesn't work? I mean when I put my gf card in it , my screen wont start. BUt when I put it to other blue Pcie (2.0 I guess) it works. What will be the reason? Do I need to do anything in bios ?

I had a similar situation recently.
1.) Check the cpu/ socket for damage
2.) Remove the mobo and make sure there are no extra stand off's under the board.
3.) Check the pci/e slot for obstruciton or debris
Other than that it's probably going to be an rma issue.

MSI Z77A-G43-memory problem

Hello
I bought lately new cpu,mb and memory. When i turned it on it was still rebooting after few seconds after start. So i treid to put just one memory in slot. It worked but only if memory is in bank 3 or 4. In 1,2 computer is still rebooting. Also it works with two memory modules, but putted in 3,4 slots only. And just in single channel. I saw that many people have the same problem and shop service wrote them that it works like that. First You put memory in slots 3,4 and then in 1,2. It is strange for me. I don't have two another memory modules to check if this is true and I want to that it works in dual channel, not single. So, is this true or mb is broken?

Hello. I have the same problem, except, I use 4 Dimms in 4 slots on my MSI board. I installed speaker on MB to see if there are any beep sounds during the booting, but all seems ok. The problem is the PC keeps still rebooting after about 5 sec. from the start. There aren´t any visual information on screen, since the start is so short. I tried to install dimms in 2nd and 4th slot first. Then to 1st and 3rd. In both cases the problem was still the same. When I put all rams in all 4 slots, the result is the same (restart for ethernity). The only way that goes is the PC runs with only 1 dimm in either 1st or 2nd slot. I tested all the memory modules and all of them work fine. I even tried this on a differennt mainboard from ASUS P8Z77-V LX. Now I tested it on MSI Z77A-G43. Both mainboards are new. There is a very slim change that both of them would be defective. Before I got MSI MB, I ran couple of days on the ASUS MB and everything was perfect, so I don´t think that CPU is defective. I even ran a few benchmarks on it. But I still don´t understand why can´t I run the system with all 16 GB of RAM instead of 4 GB in one slot. Please help me.

MSI Z77A-G43 GAMING LGA 1155 MOTHERBOARD

Does anyone know where I can get one of these in the UK, everywhere I look it says out of stock/discontinued..... I mean everywhere
I have no choice to get a z77 version of the motherboard as im running an i5 3350p ivy bridge which is a 1155 socket.
any help or location of this product would help.... I wish MSI would just sell their stuff too.

Quote from: badboy2k on 07-March-14, 08:49:26
http://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-Z77A-G43-Motherboard-Pentium-Celeron/dp/B007JRGV14/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394153251&sr=8-1&keywords=Z77A-G43
was easy as just typing it in on amazon enjoy!!!!
Thanks for the reply I did see that one but I was looking for the red and black dragon emblem one, its seem everyone of these I find is somehow discontinued.
prefer the red and black as its goes with the colours scheme I have also matches the 2 msi GPU's I have, just wondered if anyone knows of a UK retailers of this version
As a side note the blue and black doesnt look as impressive XD

MSI Z77A-G43 UEFI Overvolt+Intel Exteme Tuner Overvolt combo

Hey all,
I just wanted to run past you an experiment I did and I think worked.
I currently overclock my i5-3570k with an every day overclock of 4.4 at no offset voltage and a benchmark overclock of 4.7 at +.14V - however my benchmark overclock isnt exactly stable.
I noticed in Exteme Intel Tuning Utility There's a slider there for additional mV turbo voltage. I'm multiplier overclocking for my benchmark overclock with no power saving features and my voltage tops out at around 1.34V but when I add additional mV on Intel Extreme Tuner it goes to 1.38V. It also made me pass my 3dmark at 4.7 which is hit-or-miss but now worked every single time and also passed IBT.
Could this truly be modifying my input voltage on the CPU beyond the motherboard's limited offset mV overclocking?
Is this super dangerous and should I never do it again?
thoughts/opinions
also obligatory 3dmark link
MSI 7950 3gTF+MSI Z77A G43
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5624604

1.400v's on the CPU is the industry recommended limit for an everyday machine, so whatever way it gets there shouldn't make any difference.
Quote
I noticed in Exteme Intel Tuning Utility There's a slider there for additional mV turbo voltage. I'm multiplier overclocking for my benchmark overclock with no power saving features and my voltage tops out at around 1.34V but when I add additional mV on Intel Extreme Tuner it goes to 1.38V. It also made me pass my 3dmark at 4.7 which is hit-or-miss but now worked every single time and also passed IBT.
Could this truly be modifying my input voltage on the CPU beyond the motherboard's limited offset mV overclocking?
If not doing a 'Turbo' OC, I don't see the connection with mV turbo setting. If raising the mV on the Intel utility raises the voltage to the CPU, and it is confirmed, then it must work as you have described.

MSI Z77A-G43 (MS-7758) + MSI 970 4G - PCIE2.0 instead 3.0

Hello,
I got parts descripted in tittle and GPUID and Nvidia panel cant show gtx970 in pcie3.0
Operating system64-bit Windows 8.1 (6.3.9600)
Motherboard MSI Z77A-G43 (MS-7758) - with bios 2.D0 (lastest)
Processor Intel Core i5-2500 Processor 3,3Ghz
MSI GtX970 with Bios NV316MH.182 - Driver version9.18.13.4475
Memory 8192 MB
Module 1 - 4.096 MB Kingston DDR3 @ 667 MHz
Module 2 - 4.096 MB Kingston DDR3 @ 667 MHz
Hard drive model 160 GB INTEL SSDSA2BW160G3H
Hard drive model 256 GB SAMSUNG EVO
Hard drive model - 500GB no SSD
PSU: EVGA B2 750W

Ok, thx for reply. Honestly no idea about that.
Just one question, The difference PCIE3 in a gtx970 is significant in relation to PCIE2 in the same 970?
thank you
i found that
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/
Oks, you can close this post.

MSI Z77A-G43 DRAM underclocking

hello guys, for some reason my DRAM on my MSI Z77A-G43 board underclocks itself.
i went into my bios and set it to run at 1600 mHz but when i use CPU-Z to check my actual DRAM speed it is only at 800 mHz.
so here is my questions, how does this happen and how can i fix it?
link for my current settings:

if not already done, update your bios to the latest.
then after that, go to bios, disable x.m.p., set (relating ram) everything auto, but select 1600 mhz for your ram, and then remember to LINK the timings if u have 2 or more ram sticks, now set the timings, 9-9-9-20 (or 22, or 24), and u should be fine.
x.m.p. is crap, 1) it feeds too much voltage 2) it sets the worst timings.

Best RAID setup for MSI Z77A-G43

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