Use the Intel ICH10R onboard controllers, the regular (6-white?) SATA ports. Stay away from JMicron. But I think one of the JMicron controllers is for IDE drives, like an optical drive. These are ok! The other one may be for the SATA III 6.0Gbps ports, which are unneeded in your case!
EVGA is proud to announce its first motherboard designed around an Intel chipset: the EVGA X58 SLI. This motherboard is based off the highly anticipated Intel X58/ICH10R chipset and is optimized for those who want the absolute best. Intel X58 Series Family; EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI - (170-BL-E762-A1) PDF Coming Soon EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI - (170-BL-E762-R1) PDF Coming Soon.
Use the drivers for these provided in Windows 7, they'll auto install. In my case, when I update/install the JMicron drivers, I loose the DVD drive connected to one of them.
Install the SSD to port 0 or 1 (the first one), and the RAID drive to the next 2. Set SATA in BIOS to RAID, boot up, into RAID setup, and choose the drives for the RAID array.
Not all drives have to be in an array! Download the latest Intel chipset drivers, and install them during Windows install. This will enable TRIM support for your SSD. Yes, your SSD is in RAID, but not part of an array, so TRIM WILL work!
Foscooter, thanks for quick reply. Will follow your suggestion. I also noticed that some guys create separate partition for pagefile. Does it make any difference? Also thinking about splitting the pagefile into two parts and keep first on the SSD drive and the second on the RAID array. What you think?
I have another question which is kind of out of topic. I already have the RAID array from my previous system (DELL XPS 420). Can I move the existing array to the new motherboard without loosing the information? How should I do that? 1-Pagefile, IMHO leave it on the SSD. How much RAM do you have? More than 4GB, the pagefle will (pratically) never be used, and you could turn it off.
But since you would want quick access to this file, leave it on the SSD. But I did move mine to my HDD RAID 0 array, there for the use, but never does get used. Thus, I wouldn't bother with it's own partion. It won't get used, and doens't take up that much space (2xRAM) I like to K.I.S.S. (Keep It SImple, Stupid).
2-RAID Migration. The RAID controllers determine what went where, and are mostly incompatible between arrays, much less systems/computers.
Save your stuff on another drive (i.e backup drive), and transfer the drives to the new system and set it all up as if it was brand new. Then copy your stuff back to the RAID array, afer OS install. Installed drives as you suggested. Something weird happened when I changed the sata mode to RAID (it was IDE initially and i already had the OS installed on on the SSD). The windows 7 does not boot anymore. Was getting BSOD in the middle of os loading. So i had to reinstall the OS on the same drive with RAID enable on the controller.
A good new is that once i plugged in my old RAID-ed HDDs the BIOS immediately recognizes the array and I didn't have to recreate and restore my data. I have installed intel INF update drivers. How can i make sure that the TRIM function is enabled? From the get-go, Windows 7 will take advantage of a SSD/TRIM-enabled drive and configure it for you. While I personally disable the pagefile entirely, those who still use it will benefit significantly by keeping it on your SSD.
To determine if your SSD supports TRIM, open a console as Admin; Code: fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify If the console returns a '0', your drive supports TRIM and it is ENABLED. If it returns '1', the file system has disabled TRIM for your drive. This means your drive's controller does not support TRIM. To do this: start/all programs/accessories/command prompt/right click/choose run as administrator. This opens a DOS window, and type in the code in bold above. It works, mine came back as '0', even though I'm is RAID 0.