Merge 2 m.2 drives into 1

[StoryVFX]

So right now the only m.2 drive I have is a 250gb m.2 that I got windows 11 installed on, than I have a 2 tb hdd for games and stuff. But I just ordered a 2 tb m.2 ssd it's called kingston fury renegade I think and it comes with heat sink thingy. 

 

What I'm wondering is if I'm able to sort of merge both m.2s together into 1 so it might display one drive instead of 2.

 

Do both m.2s have to be same size ? Or same PCIe gen? Because I think my current 250gb m.2 is not 4th gen PCIe but 3rd.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Not really. You can't just extend a boot drive like this in windows, and raid typically doesn't like mixed drive sizes.

 

You can keep your curreng t 250GB as the boot drive, and store games and other files on the 2TB drive.

 

Or you can clone/reinstall the os on the 2TB and I'd probably just remove the 256GB drive as its pretty small in comparison.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, StoryVFX said:

What I'm wondering is if I'm able to sort of merge both m.2s together into 1 so it might display one drive instead of 2.

Yes, but it's almost never a good idea. The way you'd set this up is by doing NVMe RAID 0, and there isn't really a restriction on this aside from the motherboard needing to have support for it. The issues that come with this is that all the implementation of NVMe RAID I'm aware of are not that reliable. It's not uncommon for you to try booting your system and the array is broken and you risk losing all your data recovery efforts are for naught. Plus, if you have a drive actually fail, you lose all the data, not just the data on that drive. Also, since you already have data on that 250GB drive, you will have to wipe the drive in order to actually set this up, it's not just going to continue from the current setup. 

 

Just don't do this. Either move your current Windows install to the 2TB SSD and stop using the 250GB, or just have the 2TB drive as a secondary drive. 

[Ryker Robb]

13 minutes ago, StoryVFX said:

What I'm wondering is if I'm able to sort of merge both m.2s together into 1 so it might display one drive instead of 2.

 

Do both m.2s have to be same size ? Or same PCIe gen? Because I think my current 250gb m.2 is not 4th gen PCIe but 3rd.

Yes, you can create a "spanned" volume in disk management. They don't have to be the same size or pcie gen, but they do have to be set to dynamic:

https://www.minitool.com/lib/spanned-volume.html

 

But i don't think you can boot from spanned volumes through.

I think your best option would to simply add the new drive as a separate volume.

[StoryVFX]

6 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Not really. You can't just extend a boot drive like this in windows, and raid typically doesn't like mixed drive sizes.

 

You can keep your curreng t 250GB as the boot drive, and store games and other files on the 2TB drive.

 

Or you can clone/reinstall the os on the 2TB and I'd probably just remove the 256GB drive as its pretty small in comparison.

Ok thank you for this, very informative.

 

Well I'm not sure what speeds my 250gb m.2 is but would windows and other things like games and stuff be faster for example if my new 2tb m.2 is like 7000 writing and 7000 reading and my old one was 3000 writing and 3000 reading ? If that's the case than its best to move windows over to the new faster drive no? 

[Poinkachu]

1 hour ago, StoryVFX said:

Ok thank you for this, very informative.

 

Well I'm not sure what speeds my 250gb m.2 is but would windows and other things like games and stuff be faster for example if my new 2tb m.2 is like 7000 writing and 7000 reading and my old one was 3000 writing and 3000 reading ? If that's the case than its best to move windows over to the new faster drive no? 

Yes somewhat, but to perceive it, you will need a stopwatch each time.

 

 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 hours ago, StoryVFX said:

Ok thank you for this, very informative.

 

Well I'm not sure what speeds my 250gb m.2 is but would windows and other things like games and stuff be faster for example if my new 2tb m.2 is like 7000 writing and 7000 reading and my old one was 3000 writing and 3000 reading ? If that's the case than its best to move windows over to the new faster drive no? 

The 3000 number or peak read/write speeds don't matter for most uses. 

 

It probably won't be a noticable difference in most use cases.

[StoryVFX]

14 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The 3000 number or peak read/write speeds don't matter for most uses. 

 

It probably won't be a noticable difference in most use cases.

Hmm I see, but for when you are downloading large files or moving over files from folder to another than the difference from lower reading/writing speeds to higher would be quite noticeable no? I also think that windows will load faster too by a few seconds and you will load into games faster too, like when you are connecting to a csgo match for example or any other game, that is if it is installed on your m.2 ssd

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 hours ago, StoryVFX said:

Hmm I see, but for when you are downloading large files or moving over files from folder to another than the difference from lower reading/writing speeds to higher would be quite noticeable no? I also think that windows will load faster too by a few seconds and you will load into games faster too, like when you are connecting to a csgo match for example or any other game, that is if it is installed on your m.2 ssd

There are many other aspects of the drive that affect performance in real world uses that a sequentical number can't tell you.

 

It probably won't make a noicable difference in load times. 
 

If it was me I'd use the 250gb as boot, and the 2TB to store games and other files.