M.2 plus Pcie Raid 0 question

Maviagme · September 4, 2016

I have the ROG Strix X99 Gaming motherboard, it comes with 1 M.2 port, and I got a couple of SM951 M.2 ssds with 512gb each one

I'm wondering if is possible to just buy a Pcie M.2 adapter and put them both in a bootable Raid 0 for Windows 10 in this motherboard

Motherboard:

SSDs:

Is this even possible? and if it is

Is this possible with this motherboard?

Thousand Thanks

TrigrH · September 4, 2016

i think ur asking for trouble with that solution (even if it does work)

ARikozuM · September 4, 2016

It is possible but why would you want RAID (zero of all things!) for a boot drive?

Maviagme · September 4, 2016

6 hours ago, TrigrH said:

i think ur asking for trouble with that solution (even if it does work)

Well, I really dont mind trouble, as long as I learn something

5 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

It is possible but why would you want RAID (zero of all things!) for a boot drive?

Well, I want it as a boot drive and programs drive, I got another 4tb mechanical drive for random stuff

xentropa · September 4, 2016

It is possible to boot off one pcie ssd, though the process for me was a bit complicated.

As for your question.

M.2 is the interface and SSD drive shape. M.2 SSDs can connect directly to the CPU via pcie lanes (Faster), or it can connect to the chipset like a normal sata drive (Slower, but not significantly). Whichever one it does is determined by the motherboard.

The M.2 slot on your X99 motherboard can only utilize the pcie lanes/channels. M.2 via sata or chipset is not supported on X99 boards.

Currently, I don't think raiding between pcie channels is possible because pcie lanes connect directly to the CPU and the CPU probably doesn't contain the hardware to perform raid.

Usually on motherboards, hardware raid is done on the chipset. So the CPU sends the data to the chipset, the chipset performs the raid operations and then splits it onto the connected sata drives.

Since the M.2 slot only connects to the CPU via PCIe lanes, it is not possible to perform raid on those M.2 storage devices on this particular motherboard.