I have a pair of Caviar Black drives ( WD6402AAEX) connected with certified 6-Gbps cables to the Marvell controller ports on a Gigabyte GA-X58-UDR3 motherboard. Operating as individual AHCI drives, they both work just fine. When I configure the pair for RAID0, however, the whole system becomes painfully slow. For example, reinstalling Windows 7 is a 4-hour event compared to about 10-minutes without RAID.The only other drives at my disposal for testing are 3-Gbps models: those connected to the Marvell in RAID0 work just fine and the array (and system as a whole) is quite fast.Gigabyte says (of course) that other 6-Gbps drives are working just fine with their motherboard in RAID.Any thoughts?Thanks.
These drives are not designed for use in RAID configurations, and sooner or later will drop out of the array. In RAID 0, a drop will leave you with nothing. You would have to go to data recovery for any data you want back. Moreover, these drives have never been tested in a RAID array. So, I strongly recommend that you use these drives in a standard Master/Slave configuration, or return them to purchase true RAID Edition drives.
