Need Major Help with SSD and my original RAID setup

[llantant]

Hi all, New to the forums and I am really after some much needed help.

I recently purchased a crucial 128gb C300 SSD.

My Mother board is an ASUS M4A88TD-M Evo/USB3

It has 6 SATA 6gb/s port. 1 - 4 are in RAID config and 5 and 6 are IDE.

My computer was originally setup in a 2x640gb SATA 6gb/s HSS set up. RAID 0.
These are plugged into SATA1 and SATA 3 on my motherboard.

upon purchase of my SSD I rang cyberpower (the guys who built my PC about a week ago) and asked for some help setting it up. I was told to just plug into SATA2 (which was just above my HDD setup) So i followed advice and then went to reinstall windows etc... but Kept getting an error 003 or something when trying to install win to the SSD (even after wiping the partitions) I just could not continue. The next button was greyed out.

So the guy on the phone said try putting it into SATA5 (which was set to IDE) I had just seen a tech tips on how to setup an SSD and he said make sure its in AHCI mode ( i mentioned this but the guy on the phone said it didnt matter) so i followed his advice. got windows setup etc.. all drives installed and then decided to try a benchmark on my SSD. 230 mb/s read. My original was 210 mb/s. both using SATA III.

So i figured that wasnt right so after some reading up etc.. I decided to try it myself again. this time I unplugged my 2 RAID HDD's and then plugged my SSD into SATA2 and changed SATA 1-4 in the system options to AHCI. then proceeded to reinstall win 7. I got everything setup etc..

I plugged in the 2 original HDD that were in RAID but not AHCI and formatted and labelled them. So now I have 3 drives in windows. 1 SSD and 2 HDD. I tried benchmark on the SSD and it came out at 320 mb/s read. About 510 overall score. And ofc the speed on the HDD has dropped alot tho.


Sorry for the long winded story but I am getting a little stressed that I have done it wrong and I am going to ruin my new computer. I have a small amount of computer knowledge but I am not technition.

Is it possible to Set the SSD up on its own and still keep my original HDD RAID setup???

What is the best way to set up my hard drives?

absolutly any info you can give will be very much appriciated.


My comp is

AMD Phenom II 3.2ghz 1090T
GTX 470 Nvidia
4gb Corsair 1600 mhz hig performance Ram
128 gb C300 SSD
2 x 640gb SATA 6gb/s WD hdd
Asus M4A88TD-M Evo/USB3

 

[Slaymate]

If you want to run your RAID array you need to set the ports as RAID. I would plug the SSD into port 1, you should lose very little speed running the drive with the RAID controller in-lieu of the AHCI controller.

Did you run Sanitary-Erase before you re-installed Windows for the second time? Re-installing Windows over a previous Install will slow the drive down. Sanitary-Erase will reset the drive to it's original "out of the box" state. Here's a link to a good Sanitary-Erase Guide, it's from the OCZ Forum but it will work on your drive. Guide How to use Sanitary Erase

Here is my Guide for Tweaking your SSD once you get Windows re-installed
SSD Tweak Guide

 

[llantant]

Just tried sanitary erase. Didnt work. I reinstalled win to one of my other drives and booted into that. then reconnected my ssd and tried sanitary erase but it came back with error 4 then it would terminate.


Is it worth setting up in Raid or should I just leave well enough alone? Any tips to get the most out of my storage setup.

I have win 7 64 bit btw.

Ill take any and all advice.

TY

 

[llantant]

Still cannot get he Sanitary erase to work. Ive tried both ways. i get an error = 04 or something.

 

[llantant]

AS SSD Benchmark 1.5.3784.37609
------------------------------
Name: C300-CTFDDAC128MAG ATA Device
Firmware: 0002
Controller: msahci
Offset: 103424 K - OK
Size: 119.24 GB
Date: 10/11/2010 15:48:09
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 339.65 MB/s
Write: 140.54 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 20.23 MB/s
Write: 49.60 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 195.44 MB/s
Write: 111.46 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.172 ms
Write: 0.784 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 250
Write: 175
Total: 550
------------------------------

 

[llantant]

Ok I tried to run sanitary cleaner and the hdderase. Neither I could get to work. I get an error response = 4 for sanitary and hdderase I cannot get past the dos prompt.

This was after I performed a clean and clean full on my SSD. in Diskpart.

So I plugged my SSD into my SATA1 on my Mboard and moved the HDD into the SATA 2 port and SATA 3. I set all up as AHCI and then went through to windows Install etc...

So now I have my SSD as my Main Drive and 2 Data Storage Drives.

Do you recommend this Setup. I tried to Setup all as RAID but it wont let me install to the SSD when in RAID mode.

Are the Values I posted above ok???

The Acess Times seem a little High.

Any help Much appriciated.