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I've seen some PCI SSD cards at attractive prices and staggering performance (1GBps).

I've got my data on a 4 disk RAID 5 and enjoying the ~360MBps read speed. I'm considering speeding up the system by putting the OS (Win7) on RAID 0 SSDs.

Is it possible to RAID PCI-based SSDs? I'm guessing the answer is "no - you can't get a raid controller between the PCI SSDs and the PCI bus". Is this true, or is there a raid controller that understands how to communicate with multiple PCI SSD cards?

Thanks :)

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    You do it in software.
    – Everett
    Commented Jan 8, 2013 at 4:40

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You sound like you know more than me, so you might laugh at me with this answer, but from a little googling and notably this:

http://www.overclock.net/t/855461/can-you-raid-pcie-ssds

Apparently, nope, physical RAID is impossible with PCI(-e?) SSDs. Software RAID seems very much possible, though, but unless you can think of some apparutus with converting cables and plugging a RAID controller to the PCI SSDs (which would be, like, loose in the case? xD) with some PCI/SATA/whatever converter and plugging all that back to the actual PCI-e the SSDs are supposed to go on or something... Nope, looks like you can't. And even if you did that... Wouldn't going through a SATA or something to convert the signal kill the purpose of having PCI-e SSDs?

Yeah, no. I think you'll have to do with "just" the super high speed from your SSDs. :p

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  • Many thanks for the link, I was hoping there had been advances in the 2 years since that posting. Dual graphics cards exist, why not hardware PCI2PCI raid controllers?
    – user185236
    Commented Jan 8, 2013 at 5:12
  • I say, mercantile reasons. I guess there's not enough demand. After all, most people would be telling themselves "why would I want to do that, given that a PCI SSD is lightning fast already, and that my OS itself has an easy built-in option to "fuse" drives?" Or maybe there's literally a technical blockage, but I doubt it. Or maybe it's a silly reason, like "most motherboards don't even have enough slots."
    – Ariane
    Commented Jan 8, 2013 at 5:18
  • Here's a response from OCZ: The Revodrives consist of 2 or 4 SSDs in a RAID 0 array. Your motherboard will detect the Revodrive as a RAID/SCSI controller. Most end user motherboards only have enough option ROM to load one RAID controller at a time, so you will not be able to run more than 1 Revodrive at a time. In most cases, the on-board RAID controller of the motherboard must be disabled as well. ---- So it sounds like there are a few technical barriers.
    – user185236
    Commented Jan 9, 2013 at 16:26

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