Adding another NVMe SSD

[IronHide101]

I want to add another 1TB ssd to my laptop. My laptop already has a 1TB WD SN730 (came from the factory), its a pcie 3 nvme ssd.

 

My laptop's processor only supports PCIe 3, so buying a gen 4 ssd wont be beneficial right?

Need answer in terms of

1-whether is there any benefit of using gen 4 ssd, while processor/laptop motherboard support gen 3

2-is the benefit worth paying more

3-is there any benefit at all

 

For doing raid 0, what are the conditions necessary? like do both the ssd s need to be of same type or of same manufacture, or any condition on similar lines.

Will I lose previously stored data?

 

Or can I just use both ssd s separately as independent drives? If I do so what am I losing on ?

[DoctorNick]

4 minutes ago, IronHide101 said:

I want to add another 1TB ssd to my laptop. My laptop already has a 1TB WD SN730 (came from the factory), its a pcie 3 nvme ssd.

 

My laptop's processor only supports PCIe 3, so buying a gen 4 ssd wont be beneficial right?

Need answer in terms of

1-whether is there any benefit of using gen 4 ssd, while processor/laptop motherboard support gen 3

2-is the benefit worth paying more

3-is there any benefit at all

 

For doing raid 0, what are the conditions necessary? like do both the ssd s need to be of same type or of same manufacture, or any condition on similar lines.

Will I lose previously stored data?

 

Or can I just use both ssd s separately as independent drives? If I do so what am I losing on ?

1. No

2. Yes and no.Get a SSD that maxes out PCI-e

3. If you care about not loosing data, then dont choose raid 0, if speed is your only goal, raid 0 can be an option. I would go for the same drive. the SN730 is fairly decent drive and cant get much faster on PCI-E 3.0 anyway.

[RONOTHAN##]

10 minutes ago, IronHide101 said:

My laptop's processor only supports PCIe 3, so buying a gen 4 ssd wont be beneficial right?

Correct, it might even be worse depending on how good/bad the Gen 4 drive is tuned for IOPS. Unless for some reason a Gen 4 drive is noticeably cheaper than a similarly performing in random operation Gen 3 drive, stick to Gen 3, it's almost always cheaper. 

 

11 minutes ago, IronHide101 said:

like do both the ssd s need to be of same type or of same manufacture, or any condition on similar lines.

Preferably they'd all be identical. Given how janky hardware NVMe RAID is to begin with, while running two different drives would likely work, I wouldn't risk it. 

 

13 minutes ago, IronHide101 said:

Will I lose previously stored data?

There might be some way to do prevent wiping the drives, but for all the hardware RAID implementations I'm aware of (what you need in order to boot Windows off it), you will need to format the drives in order to make a RAID array. 

 

17 minutes ago, IronHide101 said:

Or can I just use both ssd s separately as independent drives? If I do so what am I losing on ?

Yes, this is what I would do in your situation. Main issue you need to worry about is file management, since you need to make sure you're putting files on both drives and can't just rely on that happening automatically like it will in a RAID 0. Still, JBOD configurations are more reliable than RAID 0 since if you lose a drive you don't lose all your data, and file management is fairly easy once you get used to it.