Help needed with SSD Upgrade

[Wayne Tai]

Hey good day to you guys,

 

I have a 2 part question actually

 

1. 

 

I am currently using a single Samsung 840 Pro 250 GB SSD but I intend to get one more of the same SSD so that I can configure a raid 0 set up. Is there any way that I can do that without having to re-install everything over again? 

 

The reason why I want to get a new one is because 250 GB obviously enough and 500 GB was way too expensive for me at the time I bought it. What I ended up doing was to uninstall the games the moment I'm done with before installing a new one. I find that quite troublesome especially when games these days are generally very huge in size. I recently installed shadow of mordor which alone takes up about 16% of my disk space =(

 

2. If the answer to (1) is yes and since I am planning to upgrade my entire rig some time soon, is there a way to re-use the 2 SSDs and put it into my new rig without having to uninstall everything? Because If I eventually have to re-install everything all over, then I won't both getting another SSD now - I'll just wait until next month when I am ready to build my new rig.

 

Thanks.

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

if you are changing lots of things, you will have driver conflictions if you aren't careful and don't reinstall windows.

if I was just switching from one SSD to two in RAID, I would personally trim down what I had on the SSD to fit onto a spare drive, which for me would be one of many 160GB drives, then I would clone, create the RAID array, and clone again. there isn't any way to build a RAID 0 (which takes the Redundant out of RAID) without formatting the two drives. the closest thing you could do is extend one onto the other which doesn't have any performance benifits over one drive.

if I was changing motherboards, I would reinstall windows as Motherboards have TONS of drivers attatched to them that would have to be uninstalled and then the new motherboard's drivers would need to be installed to get the best performance and reliability.

[wpirobotbuilder]

I am currently using a single Samsung 840 Pro 250 GB SSD but I intend to get one more of the same SSD so that I can configure a raid 0 set up. Is there any way that I can do that without having to re-install everything over again?

No, you will have to make a backup onto a separate drive. I honestly would suggest a fresh installation.

 

May I ask if you use your SSD for anything special like video editing that needs the performance of the 840 Pro? I recommend picking up a 512GB MX100 -- they're very competitive in terms of $/GB, you can get one for $210 USD. Then you can use your 840 Pro for something else, like dedicated storage for games.

[Krytopsy]

You have to get as much as SSDs as LinusTechTips group just added in their website host computer if you don't, don't do it at all. Joking, I would like to tell you that you only have to re-install Windows but there games and softwares that install a part of their data in the Windows OS drive.

[Wayne Tai]

No, you will have to make a backup onto a separate drive. I honestly would suggest a fresh installation.

 

May I ask if you use your SSD for anything special like video editing that needs the performance of the 840 Pro? I recommend picking up a 512GB MX100 -- they're very competitive in terms of $/GB, you can get one for $210 USD. Then you can use your 840 Pro for something else, like dedicated storage for games.

 

I'm using them to solely to install my windows 8.1 and all my games on. The reason I went with the samsung pro is the faster read/write speeds i suppose but I don't know. Sometimes I can spend the entire day at the computer shop and make the wrong choices. 

 

 

@ Krytopsy. I never tried installing any games a a separate drive other than my windows OS drive. Are the saved game files always stored in the drive that I install the game on or my OS drive? I'm actually okay with installing windows 8.1 because it usually won't take me very long to do a full installation complete with drivers and updates etc. Why I am so reluctant to format my SSD because I have a lot of games / game progress saved on it. My Skyrim has like 60+ different mods which I take a very long time to install and I don't think I have the time to do it all over again. 

[Captain_WD]

Hey good day to you guys,

 

I have a 2 part question actually

 

1. 

 

I am currently using a single Samsung 840 Pro 250 GB SSD but I intend to get one more of the same SSD so that I can configure a raid 0 set up. Is there any way that I can do that without having to re-install everything over again? 

 

The reason why I want to get a new one is because 250 GB obviously enough and 500 GB was way too expensive for me at the time I bought it. What I ended up doing was to uninstall the games the moment I'm done with before installing a new one. I find that quite troublesome especially when games these days are generally very huge in size. I recently installed shadow of mordor which alone takes up about 16% of my disk space =(

 

2. If the answer to (1) is yes and since I am planning to upgrade my entire rig some time soon, is there a way to re-use the 2 SSDs and put it into my new rig without having to uninstall everything? Because If I eventually have to re-install everything all over, then I won't both getting another SSD now - I'll just wait until next month when I am ready to build my new rig.

 

Thanks.

 

 

Hey Wayne Tai,

 

A fresh install is always the better option. I would say backup everything on a separate external drive and then restore on the newly installed OS.

Regarding RAID 0, You won't see any improvement during cold boot (some people even report 5 - 10 seconds slower boot compared to a single SSD cold boot). I would keep one drive for the OS and use the second separately. Also, games rely on storage only for loading times (initial and in-game). A single SSD provides enough boost for a game to load fast, I see to reason to slow down your OS boot in order to improve already optimized game load time. Storage does not affect in any way games' FPS or graphics.

 

Captain_WD.

[Dimwitted]

Turning a single ssd system into a RAIN is the worst of all possible deals. The ssd will be wiped of all current data and reformatted to work in the RAIN and the second ssd won't give you the speed gains that you expect. If it's only about the size I'd just optimize your system. Move the stuff that doesn't need the speed to the hdd and keep the o/s and apps on the ssd. You'll find that game's saved files don't need to be fast either.

[zuboici]

1. Windows 7 Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate does software RAID 0. I assume 8 does also.
2. if it's the games you want on the fast drive, stripe a pair of SSDs in addition to the OS drive and install all progs to that.
3. 840 Pro is a great drive but not cost effective - Esp as consumer SSDs have steadily got better.

 

If you're striping, get drives that don't have fancy bullshit speedy-up software like the Samsung Evos! Crucial m4, m500 or  Intel will play less tricks with your data so any RAID array will likely be more reliable. Someone stated once that Crucial M4 worked on his LSI RAID card where 840s (the normal, non-pro, non-Evo ones)  didn't play well together.

 

I have VMs on a separate SSD and just received another SSD that mathces it (m500 240GB). I'm gonna try taking a backup image of my VM drive then letting Windows build me  a stripe all while I'm playing Pixel Tonks at the same time and time how long the whole thing takes.

 

(IMO, Spending that much time at a computer shop if you don't work there is like having an internet and not using it... oh, wait...)