Stripe size for raid 0 SSD gaming library

[brendon7358]

What stripe size should I use for 2 ssd's used for a gaming library? 

 

The Ssd's are Samsung 860 QVO 4TB.  Raid controller is Z390 chipset. 

 

Spoiler is extra info, not really required to answer my question. 

Spoiler

The raid array will be used to store my steam library, and if there is a game I want to play often I will transfer it to my main drive so I don't have to wait for download times.  I will also use it for just storage of random things I don't use often like downloaded videos.  Nothing important will be stored on them, or at least anything important will be backed up to a separate drive. 

 

The reason for raid 0 is to double the SLC cache size from 78gb to 156gb (at least in theory), and double the speeds when the cache runs out from 150mb/s (hdd like speeds) to 300mb/s (almost ssd speeds).  Because they will be used for mass file transfers mainly transfer speeds are important to me. 

 

I would use a hard drive but my computer is extremely quiet and a hard drive quickly becomes the loudest part of the pc (I tried it). 

Now back to the question, motherboard manual says 128KB, some people online say 64KB, others say 16KB.  I know they are large drives but I still don't want to waste space by setting the stripe size too large, but I also don't want to loose performance for it being too small. 

 

Thanks! 

[NewMaxx]

128KB is usually what I use for that. There are various options for the RAID - if you're on Windows 10, you can do it directly through Disk Management but I prefer to use Storage Spaces because it's flexible if you use PowerShell. All of these options - including Z390's storage controller - are technically software RAID. Specific choice depends on your needs.

[brendon7358]

20 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

128KB is usually what I use for that. There are various options for the RAID - if you're on Windows 10, you can do it directly through Disk Management but I prefer to use Storage Spaces because it's flexible if you use PowerShell. All of these options - including Z390's storage controller - are technically software RAID. Specific choice depends on your needs.

I was planning on doing it through the bios, is there an advantage to doing it in windows? 

[NewMaxx]

21 minutes ago, brendon7358 said:

I was planning on doing it through the bios, is there an advantage to doing it in windows? 

Yes, the RAID becomes "portable" in the sense it will work on any Windows install. Via OpROM it will only work on boards with the Intel RST/storage controller. There's also "EZ RAID" (or whatever) which is UEFI RAID over RST I believe, which is...well, easy I guess. There are some minor differences between the different options in terms of flexibility and performance, but basically they're the same thing just with different methods of interaction and compatibility. As for the two Windows options - Disk Management stripe vs. Storage Spaces - the latter is more flexible with a bit more overhead, but can perform better in some cases.