Help Deciding M.2 config

[Quadrum]

I have a motherboard with 3 full x4 m.2 slots and a cpu that has enough available pcie lanes to run all drives. (MSI x299 Creation, 10940x)

 

I am trying to decide between a 2TB and a 1TB Samsung 970 evo plus, or getting three 1TB Samsung 970 evo pluses and running raid 0. System responsiveness is the first priority but I do often work with larger data sets and big files.
 

TLDR: Is a couple of higher capacity m.2 drives or a bunch of lower capacity m.2 drives in raid 0 better?

[ki8aras]

theoretically, the more drives the better

but you do add more points of failure to your storage system but I'm guessing you aren't really worried about that

the question is, will you gain anything meaningful from the extra drive? (because system responsiveness will be the same)

 

 

 

(storage gurus plz enlighten me I'm not an expert)

[Dedayog]

10 minutes ago, Quadrum said:

I have a motherboard with 3 full x4 m.2 slots and a cpu that has enough available pcie lanes to run all drives. (MSI x299 Creation, 10940x)

 

I am trying to decide between a 2TB and a 1TB Samsung 970 evo plus, or getting three 1TB Samsung 970 evo pluses and running raid 0. System responsiveness is the first priority but I do often work with larger data sets and big files.
 

TLDR: Is a couple of higher capacity m.2 drives or a bunch of lower capacity m.2 drives in raid 0 better?

What is a large data set or big file?  Will you benefit from the Evo Plus?  If so, then RAID 0 on then will add another layer of speed.

 

I see a 25-30% speed increase with my RAID 0 Sata drives for modded game loading, so RAID is definitely a viable way to go either way.

 

Not sure if you need regular SSD's or can utilize the Evo Plus's.  Your call.

[Quadrum]

41 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

What is a large data set or big file?  Will you benefit from the Evo Plus?  If so, then RAID 0 on then will add another layer of speed.

 

I see a 25-30% speed increase with my RAID 0 Sata drives for modded game loading, so RAID is definitely a viable way to go either way.

 

Not sure if you need regular SSD's or can utilize the Evo Plus's.  Your call.

Large data sets for me are either game files or large folders (sometimes 10s of gigabytes) of many small files (I do music production) which I need to access quickly. If you see a 25% increase in speed with raid 0, it seems like a viable option. 

[Dedayog]

1 minute ago, Quadrum said:

Large data sets for me are either game files or large folders (sometimes 10s of gigabytes) of many small files (I do music production) which I need to access quickly. If you see a 25% increase in speed with raid 0, it seems like a viable option. 

Hmm, your files are small which means a lot of starts and stops.  High end NVMe won't do much for you.  You need a large continuous file to benefit from the sustained transfer speeds.

 

I'd go RAID 0 in 2x 1TB SSD's (regular NVMe if you want) and a separate boot drive.  I prefer to keep data and Windows apart, in case.