To raid or not to raid...

[MVPernula]

Heya!

 

Long time no see, LTT forums!

So.. I've been running a bit short on fast storage lately. My two old 250GB 850 Evo drives are fast but wont really store enough anymore.

Yesterday I bought 2x 1TB m.2 drives and my spontaneous plan was to use them separately, one for OS.

 

But since I know RAID 0 (for example) would be faster, why shouldn't I? Is there really any reason *not* to?

I could simply partition out a larger chunk of the total 2TB and make that function as a bigger drive.

Any better ideas?

These drives are planned to be used for games and software, as well as some local storage.

 

Any thoughts on this is appreciated!

[whispous]

6 minutes ago, MVPernula said:

Heya!

 

Long time no see, LTT forums!

So.. I've been running a bit short on fast storage lately. My two old 250GB 850 Evo drives are fast but wont really store enough anymore.

Yesterday I bought 2x 1TB m.2 drives and my spontaneous plan was to use them separately, one for OS.

 

But since I know RAID 0 (for example) would be faster, why shouldn't I? Is there really any reason *not* to?

I could simply partition out a larger chunk of the total 2TB and make that function as a bigger drive.

Any better ideas?

These drives are planned to be used for games and software, as well as some local storage.

 

Any thoughts on this is appreciated!

RAID 0 allows faster transfer speeds, but neither Windows nor games would be capable of showing you much noticable difference.

 

RAID 0 doubles your risk of data loss, which isn't a big deal with adequate backups or with game installs, but it's effort you have to expend for basically no discernable benefit.

 

It is one way to combine both drives into a single logical drive, which is handy I guess.

[kb5zue]

IMHO, there is no logical reason to run two SSD, two NVME, or two M.2 drives in Raid 0.  The reason being these drives are not limited in speed because of mechanical moving parts.  They already are working as fast as possible because of the lack of those limitations.

 

Good Luck.

[MVPernula]

25 minutes ago, whispous said:

RAID 0 allows faster transfer speeds, but neither Windows nor games would be capable of showing you much noticable difference.

 

RAID 0 doubles your risk of data loss, which isn't a big deal with adequate backups or with game installs, but it's effort you have to expend for basically no discernable benefit.

 

It is one way to combine both drives into a single logical drive, which is handy I guess.

 

23 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

IMHO, there is no logical reason to run two SSD, two NVME, or two M.2 drives in Raid 0.  The reason being these drives are not limited in speed because of mechanical moving parts.  They already are working as fast as possible because of the lack of those limitations.

 

Good Luck.

The reason for putting them in a RAID 0 config would simply be to make them function as a single drive to ease up partitioning and installing software rather than speed.

 

To rephrase my original quiestion:
How would I, in the best way possible, make these drives function as one?

And is it a good idea to do so?

[evilcloud]

4 minutes ago, MVPernula said:

 

The reason for putting them in a RAID 0 config would simply be to make them function as a single drive to ease up partitioning and installing software rather than speed.

 

To rephrase my original quiestion:
How would I, in the best way possible, make these drives function as one?

And is it a good idea to do so?

how would you?  Either hardware raid on the bios or software raid on the install.

 

Should you - as people have already said - no not really, it's not worth the risk and you won't see any kind of speed increase, so you're literally risking data across 2 drives to make them appear as one.  

[MVPernula]

1 minute ago, evilcloud said:

how would you?  Either hardware raid on the bios or software raid on the install.

 

Should you - as people have already said - no not really, it's not worth the risk and you won't see any kind of speed increase, so you're literally risking data across 2 drives to make them appear as one.  

That would be via BIOS for me.

 

Yeah I hear ya. Guess I'll look for a different solution

[suedseefrucht]

24 minutes ago, MVPernula said:

How would I, in the best way possible, make these drives function as one?

And is it a good idea to do so?

So you just want one volume including 2 drives...
That works with RAID 0.

But if we think about it, it would mean, files on that volume would be stored on both drives and if one drive breaks, all data will be gone. And you cant just replace one drive.

So you add the breaking probability of two drives.

So do you really want this?

 

If you just create 2 volumes, you know which files are on which drive, you can easiely replace one of the drives and if a drive breaks, the other volume will still work.

[evilcloud]

maybe look in to mounting the second drive in a folder - Assign a mount point folder path to a drive. | Microsoft Docs

 

[MVPernula]

26 minutes ago, suedseefrucht said:

So you just want one volume including 2 drives...
That works with RAID 0.

But if we think about it, it would mean, files on that volume would be stored on both drives and if one drive breaks, all data will be gone. And you cant just replace one drive.

So you add the breaking probability of two drives.

So do you really want this?

 

If you just create 2 volumes, you know which files are on which drive, you can easiely replace one of the drives and if a drive breaks, the other volume will still work.

Just so I get this right.

If one drive should die all data is gone, that I get.

But does BOTH break if one dies?

 

Yeah I'm leaning towards that.

[MVPernula]

19 minutes ago, evilcloud said:

maybe look in to mounting the second drive in a folder - Assign a mount point folder path to a drive. | Microsoft Docs

 

This might be it! I'll look in to it more soon.

 

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, MVPernula said:

Just so I get this right.

If one drive should die all data is gone, that I get.

But does BOTH break if one dies?

 

Yeah I'm leaning towards that.

Well they don't break, you just loose all the data off of both drives and will be forced to format the non-borked drive before you use it again.