SSDs in RAID0, Gamesave Manager software?

[dizmo]

Hey all,

 

So, I can get a great deal on a pair of 275GB SSDs (cheaper than an individual large drive). I was considering putting them in RAID0 for my game drive, as it'd make things easier than having two separate drives. The only issue is that when equipping RAID0, you lose TRIM, and there's much greater wear on the drives; not a huge issue, since even with an increase wear rate they'll last ages. That, and I only plan to have this system for a year, maybe a year and a half.

 

Has anyone here tried setting up RAID with a Ryzen X370 motherboard?

 

I was thinking about using the program Gamesave Manager to keep a backup of my saved games, so even if it does fail, it would only be a matter of reinstalling the games and moving the saved files back. Has anyone here used this program before?

 

@Syntaxvgm I noticed you're running RAID'd SSDs, how's that been going for you?

[ARikozuM]

Just use Storage Spaces within Windows and keep backups of your saves and note all of the settings you're using for the RAID array. 

[Daniel Z.]

Storage spaces?

[KenjiUmino]

27 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I was thinking about using the program Gamesave Manager to keep a backup of my saved games, so even if it does fail, it would only be a matter of reinstalling the games and moving the saved files back. Has anyone here used this program before?

i have and it has already helped a lot. 

 

the thing is that many games save their shit on the boot drive regardless if they are installed on another drive or not and each game hides its save files somewhere else.

 

that means that even IF you would back up your whole games folder/drive, there is a good chance that half of the games lost their saves if you have to reinstall windows or replace the boot drive for whatever reason. this happened to me many times

 

it's simple when the game saves are put in the documents folder (capcom and tomb raider games save there) but some games don't save there at all or only save part of the important stuff there and the other part in some other folder on the boot drive.

 

usually, this is somewhere in C:\Users\Username\AppData but i have seen other locations too.

 

manually tracking down each games save folder and finding out wich files to back up is a chore but this gamesave manager has a database with the save location of every supported game figured out already and that really makes things easy. 

[Syntaxvgm]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

Hey all,

 

So, I can get a great deal on a pair of 275GB SSDs (cheaper than an individual large drive). I was considering putting them in RAID0 for my game drive, as it'd make things easier than having two separate drives. The only issue is that when equipping RAID0, you lose TRIM, and there's much greater wear on the drives; not a huge issue, since even with an increase wear rate they'll last ages. That, and I only plan to have this system for a year, maybe a year and a half.

 

Has anyone here tried setting up RAID with a Ryzen X370 motherboard?

 

I was thinking about using the program Gamesave Manager to keep a backup of my saved games, so even if it does fail, it would only be a matter of reinstalling the games and moving the saved files back. Has anyone here used this program before?

 

@Syntaxvgm I noticed you're running RAID'd SSDs, how's that been going for you?

Hi

First of all, you can use trim with Intel RST in raid 0, this is a more recent thing, in the past 5 years I think. Idk about ryzen but i THINK it works on x370 with some magic. Don't quote me never tried. IIRC without trim you'll tend to lose performance over time and not really so much from the degradation but just as an array over time it will degrade. At least it did with older SSDs, it had something to do with the way trim helps garbage collection? Which has gotten a lot better. 

 

Second, I don't give a shit what anyone says, if you are willing to sudden lose everything on them, it's 100% worth it.

 

Now you need to consider that drive failure is not the only reason you'll lose the arrray.

I actually suffered one loss, and this was when 10 was new and windows update came in stuck its stupid dick in my fucking drivers (same time I had other issues with ms overwriting correct drivers with generic ones for audio and other stuff). MS changed my intel RST drivers for 10 and it fucked up my array. It didn't lose anything important to me, it's basically a gaming and htpc only, but it made me so mad as it was a 100% unnecessary data loss and MS's 'we know what's best for you so we shove our upgrades and drivers on your without your permission' mentality. Since then it's been issue free and hands off. 

 

I have 2 250GB 850 evos. What happend was I wanted a 500GB evo, and they were out, so I was like fuck it 2 250 GB ones then. I built it about may or june 2016, here's a screenshot on my imgur from about a year ago of the performance 

I'm on one of my laptops right now otherwise I'd benchmark it now as well, but I guarantee it has not degraded, though its usage hasn't been heavy. 

 

It's almost like having a middle ground between an nvme ssd, except cheaper and lazier. Still boots in like 3 seconds, restarts in like 20 (And I have it set for a slow bios that shows me the RST screen first and restarts). Starts from hibernate in 8 seconds. Plenty fast enough. 0 Problems since windows 10 was still in its teething phase. 

Since I don't do anything important on this pc fuck it I love it. Next time I'll do 4, or maybe 2 nvme ones. It's stupid as hell and it's just great. 

[dizmo]

2 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Just use Storage Spaces within Windows and keep backups of your saves and note all of the settings you're using for the RAID array. 

I'll have to look into that, I've never heard of it before.

2 hours ago, KenjiUmino said:

i have and it has already helped a lot. 

-snip-

manually tracking down each games save folder and finding out wich files to back up is a chore but this gamesave manager has a database with the save location of every supported game figured out already and that really makes things easy. 

...that sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Maybe I'll just forgo keeping back ups Le sigh.

2 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

Hi

First of all, you can use trim with Intel RST in raid 0, this is a more recent thing, in the past 5 years I think. Idk about ryzen but i THINK it works on x370 with some magic. Don't quote me never tried. IIRC without trim you'll tend to lose performance over time and not really so much from the degradation but just as an array over time it will degrade. At least it did with older SSDs, it had something to do with the way trim helps garbage collection? Which has gotten a lot better. 

 

Second, I don't give a shit what anyone says, if you are willing to sudden lose everything on them, it's 100% worth it.

-snip-

Yeah I knew you could do it with Intel, but I wasn't sure about Ryzen. TRIM is wear leveling so it helps the drives lifespan...though I've also read from multiple places that it'll either die in the first 2 months, or shortly after the 5 year mark (most warranties). So. That's pretty decent.

 

Haha, Intel really did that? That's brutal. I'm not super surprised, but still...you'd think they'd be more concerned about peoples files.

 

Those speeds are nice! I know it's a small decrease in load times, but it's still nice to have. I just don't want to try and fit games between two hard drives. I'll have a small NVME drive for Windows.

[Daniel Z.]

16 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I'll have to look into that, I've never heard of it before.

...that sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Maybe I'll just forgo keeping back ups Le sigh.

Yeah I knew you could do it with Intel, but I wasn't sure about Ryzen. TRIM is wear leveling so it helps the drives lifespan...though I've also read from multiple places that it'll either die in the first 2 months, or shortly after the 5 year mark (most warranties). So. That's pretty decent.

 

Haha, Intel really did that? That's brutal. I'm not super surprised, but still...you'd think they'd be more concerned about peoples files.

 

Those speeds are nice! I know it's a small decrease in load times, but it's still nice to have. I just don't want to try and fit games between two hard drives. I'll have a small NVME drive for Windows.

Storage spaces is easy af

[ARikozuM]

RAID arrays can still be defragged and will use TRIM for SSDs. The only caveat is that you're subject to the RAID's striping (RAID 1) or mirroring (RAID 0) for all other drives.

[KenjiUmino]

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

...that sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Maybe I'll just forgo keeping back ups Le sigh.

like i said, gamesave manager makes this very easy because it has a database with the location of the save files already figured out - if the game is in the database, gamesave manager knows wich files to back up / restore so the process only takes a few mouse clicks. 

[Syntaxvgm]

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

I'll have to look into that, I've never heard of it before.

...that sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Maybe I'll just forgo keeping back ups Le sigh.

Yeah I knew you could do it with Intel, but I wasn't sure about Ryzen. TRIM is wear leveling so it helps the drives lifespan...though I've also read from multiple places that it'll either die in the first 2 months, or shortly after the 5 year mark (most warranties). So. That's pretty decent.

 

Haha, Intel really did that? That's brutal. I'm not super surprised, but still...you'd think they'd be more concerned about peoples files.

 

Those speeds are nice! I know it's a small decrease in load times, but it's still nice to have. I just don't want to try and fit games between two hard drives. I'll have a small NVME drive for Windows.

no this was Microsoft applying the wrong drivers because fuck you that's why.  It literally decided to roll me to the wrong drivers for my array. That sounds like something you let the user choose. I remember others having the same issue, but most were on a raid 1 setup and were able to repair one disk and move on with their lives. I also heard this happened during the anniversary update to some people. More commonly it would update from 8 to 10 or 10 to 10 with anniversary and just plain not have the driver and not work at all, though not breaking the array like it did in my case. 

[Tiberiusisgame]

FWIW I run two SSDs in RAID 0 using Storage Spaces specifically for my Steam/GoG/Origin libraries and it works fantastically. Even if trim were not supported, the write only happens for game updates, so it's just read. Low IOPS on the array. And who cares about data loss because it's all downloadable again.

[dizmo]

9 hours ago, Daniel Z. said:

Storage spaces is easy af

I don't even know what it is, haha. Good to know it's easy though.

49 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

like i said, gamesave manager makes this very easy because it has a database with the location of the save files already figured out - if the game is in the database, gamesave manager knows wich files to back up / restore so the process only takes a few mouse clicks. 

Oh does it? That's not too bad then. I wonder if they have a list of supported titles. Clearly I didn't look too heavily into it

43 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

no this was Microsoft applying the wrong drivers because fuck you that's why.  It literally decided to roll me to the wrong drivers for my array. That sounds like something you let the user choose. I remember others having the same issue, but most were on a raid 1 setup and were able to repair one disk and move on with their lives. I also heard this happened during the anniversary update to some people. More commonly it would update from 8 to 10 or 10 to 10 with anniversary and just plain not have the driver and not work at all, though not breaking the array like it did in my case. 

Oh wow, even worse! They're taking pages from Apples books.

38 minutes ago, Tiberiusisgame said:

FWIW I run two SSDs in RAID 0 using Storage Spaces specifically for my Steam/GoG/Origin libraries and it works fantastically. Even if trim were not supported, the write only happens for game updates, so it's just read. Low IOPS on the array. And who cares about data loss because it's all downloadable again.

Hmm yes that's true. The only concern I really have then is how often a RAID array would fail.

[Daniel Z.]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

I don't even know what it is, haha. Good to know it's easy though.

Oh does it? That's not too bad then. I wonder if they have a list of supported titles. Clearly I didn't look too heavily into it

Oh wow, even worse! They're taking pages from Apples books.

Hmm yes that's true. The only concern I really have then is how often a RAID array would fail.

Basically, you search it in windows. Add the drives and select striped or whatever. Make a drive name and letter. You are done. 

 

P.S. Apple and Microsoft are much closer now that they have Google and Amazon to worry about. Also, they don't compete in major ways. Mac and Windows users rarely switch over and Windows phone is pretty much dead.