Should i RAID My system

[RamboFR05TY]

Hey guys,

 

I was wondering if you guys could help me i am looking at running 2 OCZ - Agillity3 SSD's in Raid 0 for OS drive currently 120GB is fulling to quickly and i would just like to find out the pros and cons if its worth it and whats the best way about doing it.

 

I am a gamer so a few games will also be installed on the RAID

 

Current System:

Windows 10

I5 3570k 4.4Ghz

RAM 16GB DDR3 Dual Channel

ASRock Z77 Professional 

 

Current Storage Devices:

931GB SAMSUNG HD103UJ (SATA)  
465GB Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 (SATA)   
149GB Seagate ST3160811AS (SATA) 
111GB OCZ-AGILITY3 (SSD)
111GB OCZ-AGILITY3 (SSD)

 

 

Thanks

RamboFR05TY

 

[themctipers]

no.

[Damascus]

Raid 0 doesn't add space,  just speed.

[RamboFR05TY]

Any Reason behind why i shouldnt

[reniat]

You don't really get as much real world performance out of SSDs in RAID 0, though that doesn't mean it's not worth doing if you already have both times. there are a few things to know though:

 

If you are doing raid 0, you get increased performance (again, not really that noticeable in SSDs but it's theoretically not nothing and "free") and you don't lose any max space, HOWEVER, you need a RELIABLE backup system. In RAID 0, if you lose 1 drive you essentially lose them both, as data is garbage once you only have every other 128kb chunk.

 

EDIT: as others have mentioned, this doesn't do anything to solve your space problem, but since you do have 2 identical drives I don't really see a reason not to AS LONG AS you understand the downsides, such as the higher risk of data loss and maybe changing some bios settings to get RAID working.

[RamboFR05TY]

See i already have the SSD and currently my windows drive(120GB) is full and i have used Diskspace fan and its alot  for programs temp data fulling it 

and i dont want to compromise the boot times of the system

 

[reniat]

4 minutes ago, RamboFR05TY said:

See i already have the SSD and currently my windows drive(120GB) is full and i have used Diskspace fan and its alot  for programs temp data fulling it 

and i dont want to compromise the boot times of the system

 

By putting them in RAID 0 you would get the combined size on one logical drive, but you could get this with spanning as well. Spanning doesn't have the same speed performance, but also doesn't come with the same data loss risks since the healthy drive still likely contains all it's data (though you may have to recover it via software). RAID 0 data loss is not recoverable without next level data recovery options that is well beyond consumer approachable. And even then it's never ever guaranteed to be recoverable. ever. 

[fjdhdhcyfhf]

you cannot improve random access time of SSD like you can with mechanical drives. striping SSD only increases sequential performance. If you look at NVMe drives, the speed increases with capacity so if youre getting one of those just get one large one.

I have trialled RAID0 on SATA SSD and I had no noticeable difference in loading games. Booting was actually slower because the RAID needs to be initialised before boot which adds a second or two.

[RamboFR05TY]

Just now, reniat said:

By putting them in RAID 0 you would get the combined size on one logical drive, but you could get this with spanning as well. Spanning doesn't have the same speed performance, but also doesn't come with the same data loss risks since the healthy drive still likely contains all it's data (though you may have to recover it via software). RAID 0 data loss is not recoverable without next level data recovery options that is well beyond consumer approachable. And even then it's never ever guaranteed to get it back.

That Spanning Sounds perfect for what i need i dont really need the extra peformance i just need more space on my one SSD, do you know of a guide for Spanning the drives?

[reniat]

Just now, RamboFR05TY said:

That Spanning Sounds perfect for what i need i dont really need the extra peformance i just need more space on my one SSD, do you know of a guide for Spanning the drives?

well in my head I kind of conflated spanning (which is inside windows) and making a volume. I'm not 100% sure of the data recovery differences when using a logical volume, so I'm not sure there's any advantage to a volume other than you don't need to set up RAID. 

[RamboFR05TY]

25 minutes ago, reniat said:

well in my head I kind of conflated spanning (which is inside windows) and making a volume. I'm not 100% sure of the data recovery differences when using a logical volume, so I'm not sure there's any advantage to a volume other than you don't need to set up RAID. 

Thanks will do some testing with spanning before i move to RAID

[Jarsky]

I used to run 2 x Vertex4's 256GB's in RAID0 when I built my Z77 system. Absolutely no benefit to my system - I now just run a single Samsung Evo 850. 

 

Just keep in mind:

- Spanned volumes if a disk dies you will only loss the data from that disk - but you would lose compatibility if you wanted to do dual booting

- RAID0 if a disk dies you lose all data on both disks - it does have better compatibility though. 

[RamboFR05TY]

Turns out you cant span your C Drive only drives with unallocated space can be merged