Buying two 1TB SSDs instead of one 2TB

[SirGh0st]

So basically I was looking to buy Nvme ssd to replace my 1TB, 7 years old, Hard Drive for my games and any large files. So I would like to buy 2TB SSD and the Crucial P5 looks good to me. Thing is 2TB Crucial P5 costs 320€ and I see that 1TB drive costs 130€. So, my question is, if there is any disadvantage buying two 1TB drives instead of one 2TB. Can I somehow connect them together perhaps? I never tinkered with storage drives I don't know what is possible and what is not. Thanks for all the answers

[Robchil]

Depends on what you want realy.. and what your mainboard supports. 

if it has two m.2 slots and support raid 1, i would have bought the 2x 1TB disks and set them up in raid1 to get a 2 TB disk 

you only have 1 M.2 slot i would get the 2TB disk

[SirGh0st]

Just now, Robchil said:

Depends on what you want realy.. and what your mainboard supports. 

if it has two m.2 slots and support raid 1, i would have bought the 2x 1TB disks and set them up in raid1 to get a 2 TB disk 

you only have 1 M.2 slot i would get the 2TB disk

I would really appreciate if you could help me, I have B550 Tomahawk and it has 2x m.2 slots but one is connected to north bridge and one to south bridge I don't know if that's a problem. Also where can I find out if my board supports RAID 1. I mean it's pretty new board so I think it should.

[trag1c]

You can place them in RAID 0 so that the capacity add's up to 2TB but that is not without risk. With RAID 0 if anyone of the drives fail you loose all the data since the data is split evenly between the two drives. Even if you kept them as separate drives that is still another point of failure but this time you only lose the data on one drive.

 

Personally I would just get the single 2TB drive since there is less hassle involved and less risk.

 

@RobchilRAID 1 duplicates data across drives for redundancy. 2x1TB drives is still a 1TB volume when in RAID 1. RAID 0 effectively combines the volumes into one.

[WereCat]

Crucial MX500 2TB is around €200 but is SATA. 

This way you can get the P5 1TB and have 3TB of SSD for €330 vs 2x1TB for €320.

 

But it's up to you. And also depends on how many NVMe slots you've got 

[SirGh0st]

1 minute ago, trag1c said:

You can place them in RAID 0 so that the capacity add's up to 2TB but that is not without risk. With RAID 0 if anyone of the drives fail you loose all the data since the data is split evenly between the two drives. Even if you kept them as separate drives that is still another point of failure but this time you only lose the data on one drive.

 

Personally I would just get the single 2TB drive since there is less hassle involved and less risk.

 

@RobchilRAID 1 duplicates data across drives for redundancy. 2x1TB drives is still a 1TB volume when in RAID 1. RAID 0 effectively combines the volumes into one.

Thank you so much for answer.

Are there any negatives besides the data loss when going with two drives? Like slower speeds or slower latency? I only plan to install games on those drives and I have pretty fast internet so losing the game files and installing them again is not problem at all. It's a lot of money to go with one drive after all. Also the fact that one m.2 is connected dirrectly to the cpu and one to the south bridge is not a problem? The crucial p5 is pcie 3.0 only tho so it shouldn't be right?

[Robchil]

3 minutes ago, trag1c said:

 

@RobchilRAID 1 duplicates data across drives for redundancy. 2x1TB drives is still a 1TB volume when in RAID 1. RAID 0 effectively combines the volumes into one.

yeah, short brainfart by me. mine are in raid0. 

 

It seems like the B550 supports raid 0. 

the danger of loosing data due to nvme failure are way lower than on spindisks. and are set up to gain speed. 

[SirGh0st]

Just now, WereCat said:

Crucial MX500 2TB is around €200 but is SATA. 

This way you can get the P5 1TB and have 3TB of SATA for €330 vs 2x1TB for €320.

 

But it's up to you. And also depends on how many NVMe slots you've got 

I've got 2 slots. I already have SATA ssd only for operating system(250gb one). I was looking to but nvme ssd for games to replace my old HDD. 

 

((I'm using SATA ssd for OS and will continue to do so. I got a lot of friends that use nvme for OS and got some problems so I settled for using SATA ssd for OS only.))

[Senzelian]

18 minutes ago, Robchil said:

if it has two m.2 slots and support raid 1

RAID 1 mirrors the data onto the other drive. That means he'd lose half the space.

 

As mentioned, you could use RAID 0 to combine both drives, but that isn't a good idea, as you will lose all data if one drive fails.

But there is another solution: JBOD.

A JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) simply combines multiple drives into a single drive letter. 

 

But I also have to say that you'd be better off simply not combining them at all. JBODs prioritize one drive, so you'll mostly just use one drive, instead of using both equally. Simply manage your storage space properly and it'll be fine. I assume that you're using it mostly for games. With a lot of launchers, such as Steam, you can create two or more storage spaces for games and simply select to which one you want to install it to.