Need help deciding if I should use RAID??

[ryannuttall]

So I recently just built a new computer, and I am looking to see if I should setup my drives in RAID. I use my computer for gaming only and work/personal stuff here and there. BUT, all of my work files and all of my personal files are synced to OneDrive so I have access to either if I just login to my OneDrive on any Windows Device(Work laptop, personal laptop, or my home desktop). 

 

I am considering doing a RAID 0 setup so maximize the speeds, total size of my volume partition, and also so I don't have to remember what games are stored on what volume. 

 

Right now, I have 3 SSDs in my build:

- Samsung 980 Pro 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4

- Crucial P5 Plus 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4

- Some random 500GB SATA SSD that was in my old build(Perfectly fine with just taking this out....)

- (I will be getting a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 for Christmas on Monday)

 

So my question is, should I even bother with setting up a RAID 0? Right now the 1TB 980 Pro is my Boot drive along with the biggest games I have on my PC. The 500GB SATA SSD is holding Baulders Gate and some random other smaller games, and then the 2TB is for any new games I want to download in the future. The new 2TB SSD will also be for that whenever I run out of game space. The annoying this is right now is trying to find out what game is on what drive when I need to access the save files or something. 

 

If I do end up using RAID 0, I read if one drive fails, then all my data is lost... So if I have Windows installed on the RAID 0 Partition with all of my games, will my computer just not work one day if one of my drives fails? I have setup RAID in the past when I took a class in High School to get my certification but I haven't ever actually used it in real world experiences. I usually just add a drive and make it a separate Simple Volume. With that being said, would everything that is currently on my drives be deleted if I did setup RAID?

 

Thanks in advanced.

[Dedayog]

2 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

So I recently just built a new computer, and I am looking to see if I should setup my drives in RAID. I use my computer for gaming only and work/personal stuff here and there. BUT, all of my work files and all of my personal files are synced to OneDrive so I have access to either if I just login to my OneDrive on any Windows Device(Work laptop, personal laptop, or my home desktop). 

 

I am considering doing a RAID 0 setup so maximize the speeds, total size of my volume partition, and also so I don't have to remember what games are stored on what volume. 

 

Right now, I have 3 SSDs in my build:

- Samsung 980 Pro 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4

- Crucial P5 Plus 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4

- Some random 500GB SATA SSD that was in my old build(Perfectly fine with just taking this out....)

- (I will be getting a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 for Christmas on Monday)

 

So my question is, should I even bother with setting up a RAID 0? Right now the 1TB 980 Pro is my Boot drive along with the biggest games I have on my PC. The 500GB SATA SSD is holding Baulders Gate and some random other smaller games, and then the 2TB is for any new games I want to download in the future. The new 2TB SSD will also be for that whenever I run out of game space. The annoying this is right now is trying to find out what game is on what drive when I need to access the save files or something. 

 

If I do end up using RAID 0, I read if one drive fails, then all my data is lost... So if I have Windows installed on the RAID 0 Partition with all of my games, will my computer just not work one day if one of my drives fails? I have setup RAID in the past when I took a class in High School to get my certification but I haven't ever actually used it in real world experiences. I usually just add a drive and make it a separate Simple Volume. With that being said, would everything that is currently on my drives be deleted if I did setup RAID?

 

Thanks in advanced.

No, don't use RAID.  

[ryannuttall]

Just now, Dedayog said:

No, don't use RAID.  

Any specific reason why I shouldnt? Just looking to learn more about RAID for the future.

[aoxomoxoa]

You're better off just using the drives individually. RAID 0 has no redundancy, meaning that if one drive dies, all data dies. Think about using RAID in a server configuration, not in your main PC.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

3 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

Any specific reason why I shouldnt? Just looking to learn more about RAID for the future.

The primary reason is that for RAID 0 you want identical drives, and yours are not even similar.

[will0hlep]

27 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

- Samsung 980 Pro 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4

- Crucial P5 Plus 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4

- Some random 500GB SATA SSD that was in my old build(Perfectly fine with just taking this out....)

- (I will be getting a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 PCIe Gen 4 for Christmas on Monday)

Reasons not to RAID 0 these drives:

 

1) you'd be limited to only using 500GB of each drive, giving you 2TB of usable storage from 5.5TB of SSDs.
 

2) your drives would each be limited by the slowest drive in the array (in this case the SATA SSD), This would give the array a max theoretical sequentual speed of 3GB/s which is slower than each of those NVMe drives are individually.

3) As the data would be striped over the drives, a single drive failure would result in the complete loss of all stored data.

 

TLDR: For Raid 0 to make any sense you need to have several same sized (and same type) drives, holding data you need extreme fast access too, which is backed up elsewhere. Your situation seems to fulfill non of these.

[Agall]

26 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

Any specific reason why I shouldnt? Just looking to learn more about RAID for the future.

30 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

I use my computer for gaming only and work/personal stuff here and there. BUT, all of my work files and all of my personal files are synced to OneDrive

^The reason you shouldn't use RAID. RAID0 is dumb outside of extremely high intensity read+write scenarios where redundancy isn't necessary, otherwise, RAID1 will at least give double the reads while enhancing redundancy. If your important data is already backed up to cloud and its a burnable Windows image, then you no longer require redundancy, making most of RAID1's features unnecessary.

 

An argument can be made for RAID5 in some scenarios, but for a burnable gaming PC, its just more complexity and potentially input latency.

 

31 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

So my question is, should I even bother with setting up a RAID 0?

No, I ran this test myself and it arguably increased input latency, since it forces communication through the chipset for the secondary M.2 slot (primary one being wired to the CPU/North Bridge). There's a simplicity to having as little negotiation with the 'chipset' (really the South Bridge), being the inferior peripheral die in a modern computer.

 

[wONKEyeYEs]

48 minutes ago, ryannuttall said:

Any specific reason why I shouldnt? Just looking to learn more about RAID for the future.