New Build... should I RAID?

tyrannicpuppy · April 17, 2021

I'm currently in the process of planning out my first PC build in over a decade as my old tower has just about had it. I've settled on most of the parts, but I am curious as to whether I should try my hand at a RAID array in the new tower when I build it (as my understanding is building one later will require wiping the drives).

The purpose of the computer will be mainly as a Plex Server/HTPC with the occasional gaming (once I can afford to replace the GTX680 I'm keeping from the current tower, can't afford to replace that right now). For serving the media, I'll simply get a few massive HDDs as I don't care if I lose any of the TV or movie files to drive failure. Redownloading or ripping those is so easy as to be laughable these days.

What I'm considering is a PCIe 4.0 nvme C drive on the MB, and I am wondering if there would be any benefit in making a RAID 1 array with a sata ssd (of the same capacity) as the redundancy for that drive. Would doing this remove all benefit of having a 4.0 nvme? Or would I still get the speeds of the nvme and then it copies to the redundant drive after the original operation is completed? This is where I will be storing any vital files that I want to ensure the security of.

So far my budget is mostly used up buying the new MB/CPU/RAM so the tower will be a hodge podge of my exisiting sata drives (mostly HDDs with one SSD) and an nvme as the new boot drive. So I'm considering ways of ensuring redundancy without blowing my budget entirely on nvme drives.

My only experience with RAID to date is on my WD EX4 NAS enclosure, which was preset to RAID5 with the included four HDDs. So I am a total newbie when it comes to this tech and welcome some tips from those more knowledgable than myself.