SSD raid0 issue

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trick0502

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So I finally got around to doing a clean install of Win10 on my PC. I decided to move Win10 to a single 500GB ssd and use 2 x 250GB in raid0 for games. I'd been running the 2 x 250GB in raid0 for a few years without problems, but they were running on old firmware. So I deleted the raid0 and did a clean install of Win10 on the 500GB. The first thing I did was install the Samsung utility and updated the firmware on the 250GB drives. After that I did a secure erase on both drives so they would be clean. Next I made the raid0 in the Intel raid utility. Get into Win10 and run some benchmarks; everything looks fine. Well, things are not fine. When I started to add any data to the drive it would case explorer to crash to the point where I would have to restart the PC. Even just trying to run trim on the raid would cause Windows to not respond. I tried different stripe sizes and still had the same results. Testing both drive individually, they are fine.

Any suggestions on what to look at?

ssd.jpg
 
Break the striped drives apart and test each drive separately. You'll likely find one has an issue causing the file explorer to crash (I had a similar issue but with a single drive doing the same).

You might also want to double check the cable connections, power and data, on the drives and the motherboard. You can also try replacing the SATA cables as well.
 
I know this is not a very helpful answer but... don't bother with raid 0 on a SSD that will be used for games, seriously. You will not gain anything and will probably even lose a little because of the latency etc. And a single one of those drives is pretty much maxing the SATA interface already (meaning they are plenty fast for everything already, unless you need extreme sequential performance, say if you're working with very large files).

Just use them as separate drives, you'll also be much happier if one of them ever fails.
 
kalston said:
I know this is not a very helpful answer but... don't bother with raid 0 on a SSD that will be used for games, seriously. You will not gain anything and will probably even lose a little because of the latency etc. And a single one of those drives is pretty much maxing the SATA interface already (meaning they are plenty fast for everything already, unless you need extreme sequential performance, say if you're working with very large files).

Just use them as separate drives, you'll also be much happier if one of them ever fails.
Click to expand...

see i agree with that, but if theyre in raid, it will be one volume. 250gb for games isnt a lot these days.

right now i am writing 75gb to each drive. it is almost done without any problems.
 

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You only have 3-4 drives. 250GB can fit plenty of games unless the only ones you buy are toward the extreme end (Deus Ex 2). Agreed with the poster above skip the headache and just have one for origin games and one for Steam.
 
have you seen the size of newer games? 50gb is starting to be the norm for aaa games.
 
Sure and I've had 100+GB games with mods and whatnot but I don't see the problem with having multiple drives in your case (unless 100+GB games become the norm lol).

Steam and GoG can easily be used with different drives for example. With Origin and Uplay it might be a little bit more complicated IIRC but junction links are really not hard to use if it really comes down to that. There's even some applications with a friendly GUI to manage them without having to bother with command lines.

Of course if you really want to have one single gaming drive to manage in the UI it's up to you (and I'm sorry I can't help with this specific problem!).

Maybe the right question is: do you really need a 500GB drive for the OS? I always use my smallest drive for the OS, I try as much as possible to keep the apps, docs, games etc. on different drives. It's so much easier when doing backups, reinstalling and you lose much less whenever a drive fails.

So in your case I would do something like : 250GB for the OS and some non critical apps, another 250GB SSD for the docs/more important apps and then 500GB for the games.
 
Make sure you're running the latest raid driver for your chipset. Should be 14.8 iirc.

If you still have issues, split the raid and test the drives separately.

It could be something silly like a cable going bad. Or one or both drives going bad. Could even be something wrong with the motherboard. But all that is hard to identify with multiple loose ends being tested at the same time.
 
both drives test fine, but i just noticed im only running 14.5 (latest from the msi site). going to install 15.8 and see if that helps.

ssd3.jpg
 
Hey...what does "activate windows" on your desktop mean?

I blame MS for your issues.

;)
 
i just did i clean install. im not going to activate till i know the system is good.
 
do you think having hot swap enabled in the bios could cause this? i just tested the drives in a work pc (q270) without issue.
 
Well hot swap did nothing. I really can’t figure this out. I tested the drives individually. Just downloading a game will cause the system to lockup.

I am really out of ideas.
 
so i took both drives to work today and installed them on a q77 i7 3770 system. i did a clean install of win10 using the same install media i used on my pc. i copied over 100gb to each of the drives without issue. at this point i am thinking it is some bios issue, but i really dont know what to try. i have the bios set to ahci with hot swap disabled. i also tried raid and hot swap enabled. is there some other bios setting i should look at?
 
ok so im going to test this:

intel rst 14.8.16.1063 (highest version supported by chipset)
disabled Link Power Management

anything anyone can come up with?
 
I run 3 x 2TB SSD's in RAID 0 for my Steam library and I couldn't be happier. Also, if one of them crashes I don't care since it's Steam and I can just re-download everything!
 
so that didnt work. but i did try something and had a very interesting result. i used a wd red 1tb hdd and set that up as my steam library. downloaded csgo, dods no problems (both small games). i tried to download doom and the system crashed. why would downloading a large game on steam make the system crash?
 
If it crashed, you have a dump. If you don't - enable memory dump and repeat. I know windows logs can be cryptic, but is there anything of value in there?
 
Last edited:
from steam forums:

Well i finally found the problem, when i tried to install a game with a big download size it will slowly use up all the memory in task manager until it showed 99% was being used. So i did some research and found out that it was a memory leak from a program from my msi mother bourd called something like killer network , then i just changed the value in the registry and restart the computer it worked. Also Thank you for all you who tried to help me i really appreciate it.

if that ends up being the problem, im going to be so ......
 
so far it looks like the killer nic drivers were the problem. i installed the nic drivers from killers site (instead of the ones from msi) and it seems to be working. i guess ill know for sure in a few hours.

looks like i might have posted too soon. still not working.
 
Sorry if you did already but have you tried downgrading the drivers and RST? Maybe without RST and just the driver installed?
 
You think the new BIOS update caused it or was it bad drivers from MSI? I have an ASUS board with "gamefirst" ethernet, it is really a bad gimmick.. I was getting slowed way down in internet speed because of it, after uninstalling the crap my pc gets the full fiber throughput now. I wonder if those old drivers work on the old BIOS but not the new one.
 
Still would not bother with raid and ssds

just buy ssd size you need and you not need to bother with raid any more(unless your doing video editing on large video files then having the speed is useful) best to use it using drivers that come on that CD (but odd the ones from. Msi website was causing issues as they should Be up to date at least you was able to get it from killer website)
 
I've used raid o with spinners and ssds.

There is a performance boost. With a steam library no data to lose so long as you use cloud or another drive for save games.
 
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