Raid 0

DeRealDeano · December 24, 2015

Hi there,

I am looking to set-up a raid 0 on my machine and wanted some advise on a few things.

currently I have a 250GB Kingston SSD running windows, so;

1. would I have to get another Kingston or any SSD brand i.e Hyper X Fury Samsung or Sandisk will work along with my current SSD?

2. Do I have to get the same GB size

and

3. what is the best way/method of set up a raid 0.

thanks in advance.

Dean.

refinedskillz · December 24, 2015

You sure you want RAID 0? One f*ck up and your data goes to sh*t.

EmeraldFlame · December 24, 2015

Hi there,

I am looking to set-up a raid 0 on my machine and wanted some advise on a few things.

currently I have a 250GB Kingston SSD running windows, so;

1. would I have to get another Kingston or any SSD brand i.e Hyper X Fury Samsung or Sandisk will work along with my current SSD?

2. Do I have to get the same GB size

and

3. what is the best way/method of set up a raid 0.

thanks in advance.

Dean.

First off, I would highly recommend not setting up a RAID 0. You really won't see a large performance benefit from it. Any speed you gain on start-up is going to be offset by the fact that the raid controller and raid has to initial during boot now. And you will rarely if ever be transferring large files from a source that is quick enough to take advantage of the speed bump you get on sequential read/writes. Although you may see an increase in small reads/writes in the 4-16k range, maybe a bit larger.

You will also be risking the integrity of your data by literally doubling the chance of failure. In a RAID 0 if any single drive fails you lose ALL the data on ALL of the drives. Nothing will be recoverable. You can format and reuse the remaining drives, but the data will be lost forever.

With those warnings in mind, the answers to your questions are:

1. You can pick up any other SATA based SSD regardless of brand and put it into RAID with your current SSD. However, it is recommended you get the exact same make and model. Getting a different SSD can cause some odd performance issues because of inconsistencies between how the 2 controllers handle data differently.

2. You don't have to, but it is recommended. RAID will limit the space of all drives to the smallest drive in the array. So if you went out and bought a 120GB drive and put it into RAID 0 with your 250GB drive, the RAID array would only be 240GB. You could format the remaining 130GB as a separate partition if you wanted to, but you would only see single drive speeds on it obviously. The same idea is true if you buy something bigger. If you go buy a 1TB SSD and put it into RAID 0 with your 250GB one your RAID will only be 500GB. Once again you could partition the remaining 750GB separately, but that isn't ideal, you don't get the full benefit of the speed advantage.

3. RAID 0 has practically no overhead so it doesn't really matter. Follow whatever instructions your motherboard has for RAID 0. Some boards have some sort of low power RAID controller on them and that will be fine for RAID 0. Others rely on a software RAID through Intel's Rapid Storage software, for RAID 0 that is perfectly fine too. You don't need anything special for RAID 0 and I haven't seen a MoBo that doesn't support it in literally 10+ years so just follow whatever instructions came with it.

To be completely honest, not trying to be a prick or anything, but it doesn't sound like you should be running any RAID right now because you don't understand the pros and cons of what happens when you do. I would very seriously recommend doing deeper research and reading before you seriously consider doing so.

DeRealDeano · December 24, 2015

Thanks for your response guys, much appreciated. to be completely honest, it was an experiment I was planning on doing. I will definitely do a little more research before committing to it. once again, thanks for your replies.