SSD capacity differences issue

By Tom
in Hardware Hangout

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Grand Master

Tom

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Hi there.

I have a 60GB and 120GB Corsair Force Series 3 SSD. I have Windows 7 installed onto the 60GB version and now want to install Windows 8. I'm curious as to how I get Windows 7 and 8 onto a SSD.

I was thinking about RAID0'ing the drives but I've read in several places that it's not possible if the capacities aren't the same. Realistically having a 180GB drive would be less hassle than having to store stuff on different drives.

Does anyone have any idea of the best way to go about this?

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Grand Master

Mindovermaster Global Moderator

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IIRC, you can RAID0 it, but you will loose 60GB off your 120GB.

Are you saving any data on the 120GB? It would be easier to have Win 7 and Win 8 on two separate drives. I do this myself.

Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

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Having a combined storage of 180 GB (consisting of 60 GB + 120 GB) isn't possible with RAID 0. The most you'd have is 120 GB because it's limited by the smallest amount of storage (60 GB). I may be wrong but if you went ahead with that, then you'd need to format both hard drives. You'd also need another hard drive to backup your data.

I read about another method of combing hard drive storage that doesn't require a format called "concatenation" (also referred to as SPAN or BIG). It combines independent hard drives into one logical drive which is what you want.

Grand Master

Astra.Xtreme

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On top of losing the 60GB, you'll also lose TRIM. And if one drive goes bad, you lose all your data. So yeah, it's not worth going into. The speed increase you'll get isn't really noticeable in every day tasks.

Regarding Win 8, you'll just have to follow a dual-boot guide. I'm sure there are a bunch of them out there. Just make sure you have enough free space on your 60GB for that.

Grand Master

+LogicalApex MVC

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RAID isn't for the faint of heart. You'll run into a number of issues. Such as, possibly BSODs on resume from standby (as the SSD doesn't wake up fast enough so the RAID card considers it dead which causes the OS to no longer have a drive), loss of TRIM (as Astra.Xtreme said, unless you're on the latest Intel chipset which does do TRIM in RAID0), and the addition of latency (RAID 0 will speed up your raw transfer speeds, but slow down finding data).

I'd skip RAID unless you're well aware of the issues you may face and can demonstrate that it would bring more to the table.

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