Should I RAID 0 my SX8200 Pro 1TB x2?

[ch3w2oy]

Amazon had a lightning deal for $118 so I grabbed a second one. 

 

I'd really prefer the storage combined but don't know if there are any risks involved.. 

 

Any tips? Any tutorials that can ensure I do it correctly? This is my first time so I want to make sure I do it the right way.. 

 

Are there reasons I shouldn't do it?

Is a drive more likely to fail in RAID 0?

 

I will keep a backup so I'm not worried about losing data. 

 

I have a Ryzen system with specs in sig. 

[nick name]

5 minutes ago, ch3w2oy said:

Amazon had a lightning deal for $118 so I grabbed a second one. 

 

I'd really prefer the storage combined but don't know if there are any risks involved.. 

 

Any tips? Any tutorials that can ensure I do it correctly? This is my first time so I want to make sure I do it the right way.. 

 

Are there reasons I shouldn't do it?

Is a drive more likely to fail in RAID 0?

 

I will keep a backup so I'm not worried about losing data. 

 

I have a Ryzen system with specs in sig. 

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you but the drives are $10 cheaper now.  

 

Edit:

Wait, no.  Not the same drive.  Disregard.  

[ch3w2oy]

10 minutes ago, nick name said:

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you but the drives are $10 cheaper now.  

 

Edit:

Wait, no.  Not the same drive.  Disregard.  

I wish lol. I paid $189 for my first one I think.. I was debating buying one of the cheaper Phison 12 NVMes when I noticed the one I had was on sale.. I just don't think you can beat that.. High end for the same price as an SSD, couldn't pass it up.. 

[Windows7ge]

Realistically speaking you won't see much of any performance gain over just running one. It's not really worth it.

 

Using RAID0 here won't reduce the lifespan of them (Though I vague remember something about idle garbage collection being disabled with RAID on SSDs which would degrade performance over time. That may no longer be the case though so don't quote me there.)

[ch3w2oy]

10 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Realistically speaking you won't see much of any performance gain over just running one. It's not really worth it.

I don't need the preformance increase. I'd like to not have to deal with multiple drives in Windows, which is my sole reason for considering this.. 

 

What do you mean by its not really worth it? Is it too much work to accomplish RAID 0 successfully? 

 

Is there another way to achieve what I'm trying to do? 

[Windows7ge]

8 minutes ago, ch3w2oy said:

I don't need the preformance increase. I'd like to not have to deal with multiple drives in Windows, which is my sole reason for considering this.. 

 

What do you mean by its not really worth it? Is it too much work to accomplish RAID 0 successfully? 

 

Is there another way to achieve what I'm trying to do? 

Most people use a fast boot drive and a slower secondary drive for videos/music/pictures/etc, or a NAS/File Server even.

 

It's not difficult to do. There's many ways to achieve it. My point is if your was speed the risk that a drive could die, the configuration could become corrupt, or you motherboard failed causing you to lose all your data without professional data recovery isn't worth the performance gain.

 

If you really had to you could look into a spanned disk. I don't really recommend this either but it wouldn't mean losing all your data if a drive failed.

[Dedayog]

48 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Realistically speaking you won't see much of any performance gain over just running one. It's not really worth it.

 

Using RAID0 here won't reduce the lifespan of them (Though I vague remember something about idle garbage collection being disabled with RAID on SSDs which would degrade performance over time. That may no longer be the case though so don't quote me there.)

Yes, he will.  While there isn't much gain in NVMe over SATA for regular usage, going RAID 0 nets a benefit due to the real world concept of how RAID 0 works.

 

I gained a 25% increase in load speeds for heavily modded games with my RAID 0 Samsung 860's.  Since they had a set load time measured in minutes, it was easily to qualify the increase.

 

No, RAID 0 doesn't increase a drives propensity to fail.  It just uses them both more than just using one til it's full then moving on to the next.  So if Drive 2 was going to fail, it may do so sooner since it's being used and not sitting idle.

 

Mine as easy to set up in BIOS, not sure how you plan to do it. Just watch a YT guide on your motherboard or follow the manual's guidelines.

 

Is it worth it?  Only you can say, since RAID has its benefits and risks that are inherent to RAID.  There is a speed benefit tho, yes.

[ch3w2oy]

38 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

Yes, he will.  While there isn't much gain in NVMe over SATA for regular usage, going RAID 0 nets a benefit due to the real world concept of how RAID 0 works.

 

I gained a 25% increase in load speeds for heavily modded games with my RAID 0 Samsung 860's.  Since they had a set load time measured in minutes, it was easily to qualify the increase.

 

No, RAID 0 doesn't increase a drives propensity to fail.  It just uses them both more than just using one til it's full then moving on to the next.  So if Drive 2 was going to fail, it may do so sooner since it's being used and not sitting idle.

 

Mine as easy to set up in BIOS, not sure how you plan to do it. Just watch a YT guide on your motherboard or follow the manual's guidelines.

 

Is it worth it?  Only you can say, since RAID has its benefits and risks that are inherent to RAID.  There is a speed benefit tho, yes.

Thanks a lot, I'll search for some guides.. Just didn't want to miss anything lol. 

[Dedayog]

7 minutes ago, ch3w2oy said:

Thanks a lot, I'll search for some guides.. Just didn't want to miss anything lol. 

And yes, @Windows7ge has the recommendation of just spanning drives too, which works to make a larger disc and have 1 drive letter.  That works too, no speed increase of course.  

 

But if you have 2 identical drives, I'd RAID them.  Especially if your game library for example will be larger than just one of the drives, as mine is.  So you can keep it to 1 drive letter, as you mention.

[Windows7ge]

@jstudrawa It all depends on the workload. Even after you've saturated the PCI_e x4 3.0 link IOPS will continue to scale yes. This can make this feel snappier even if the actual bandwidth is no longer increasing. If you're an extremist then yeah, go for it but for an overwhelming number of workloads it's not really worth the downtime you'll experience if the RAID fails.

 

@OP

If you do go through with it. Just do yourself a favor and keep a constant backup of everything. There's software like FreeFileSync and RSYNC that can regularly back everything up to a local or network drive.

[Dedayog]

31 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

@jstudrawa It all depends on the workload. Even after you've saturated the PCI_e x4 3.0 link IOPS will continue to scale yes. This can make this feel snappier even if the actual bandwidth is no longer increasing. If you're an extremist then yeah, go for it but for an overwhelming number of workloads it's not really worth the downtime you'll experience if the RAID fails.

 

@OP

If you do go through with it. Just do yourself a favor and keep a constant backup of everything. There's software like FreeFileSync and RSYNC that can regularly back everything up to a local or network drive.

For something like a Steam library, it's a good choice.  Games are on Steam's server, and you can backup save info, etc.

 

Workload, sure.  But when Ark goes from 3 minutes to load into a server to just over 2 minutes, that's a solid measurable real life speed increase.  That's small files and medium files.  Not sure how you measure things but I do it with a stopwatch from hitting JOIN SERVER to seeing my dinos

 

Edit:  No, don't RAID up for office stuffs or things like that.  Anything you spend a decent amount of time waiting for, yes.