How to Install OS/files from 1x500GB 850 EVO SSD to 2x960 evo (RAID0)

[Zyndo]

Is it possible to take the system image of my first drive and put it into my RAID0 I created? I have the RAID 0 created in BIOS, I have the RST drivers, and I can put these two things together and install a fresh OS onto the RAID array (960 EVO x2),... but if instead of doing a fresh install, If i attempt to restore from a system image of my original drive (500GB 850 EVO) It threatens to clear and format all my drives without giving me the option to select my RAID0 partition to move the image onto. It says, if i don't have any drive options to select above, I should try to load drivers, but on this page my RST drivers do not seem to work... Am i doing something wrong? Is what I'm trying to do even possible? or is maybe a system image just the wrong way to go about getting my original drive cloned into this RAID?

[Enderman]

First of all, why are you even doing raid...

 

Second, do a clean install properly or you will have problems with windows.

[kb5zue]

Absolutely do a clean and fresh install, especially since you are doing Raid0.  Doing otherwise is just an invitation for trouble.  And with the dual 960 Evos, there is no justification in using Raid0 other than for the increase in volume as a Raid0 setup with dual SSD will really not do anything to increase speed as the SSD are already running as fast as they can.  You will not realize any potential increase in speed.

[nosirrahx]

4KT1Q1 speed usually drops with RAID 0, which is the only benchmark number that actually matters for general OS usage.

People get obsessed with the benchmark numbers that help multi user database (mixed read/write high queue/high thread count) and massive file transfer over fast connection (sequential read/write) because those numbers explode with RAID 0 but they are close to meaningless to a home user.

[Zyndo]

7 hours ago, Enderman said:

First of all, why are you even doing raid

Because I can and because I want to. two 500GB's were the same price as a 1TB (and I'm a 1TB kind of guy). Free speed is free speed.

 

6 hours ago, kb5zue said:

Absolutely do a clean and fresh install, especially since you are doing Raid0.

alrighty.

 

5 hours ago, nosirrahx said:

4KT1Q1 speed usually drops with RAID 0, which is the only benchmark number that actually matters for general OS usage.

And why is that? would that number/performance change beneficially with a smaller/larger stripe size?

[Enderman]

7 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

Because I can and because I want to. two 500GB's were the same price as a 1TB (and I'm a 1TB kind of guy). Free speed is free speed.

More like "increase in potential data loss for no noticeable increase in speed"

A single drive is a much better choice.

[johnukguy]

12 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

Because I can and because I want to. two 500GB's were the same price as a 1TB (and I'm a 1TB kind of guy). Free speed is free speed.

 

 

Because you want to and can are perfectly viable reasons. However, you get zero real world speed increase from using RAID0 much of the time. If you are going to use it though, absolutely do a fresh OS install.

[Zyndo]

Just now, Enderman said:

More like "increase in potential data loss for no noticeable increase in speed"

A single drive is a much better choice.

and why would my drives be more prone to failing? I'd be with you 100% if we were talking about HDD's for a variety of reasons, but it was my understanding that SSD's are basically only limited to number of writes.... they rarely fail otherwise. with 1 500 000 hours MTBF, that's 171 years of powered on time before the drive should fail (on average). that's 24/7/365 for 171 years with power running through it. I use my PC only a few couple hours a day so that number of years is massively higher in actuality.

So when we talk about writes, in raid 0 each drive is only going to experience half of the writes so each one should live twice as long by that perspective (which is the most typical way SSD's die from my understanding)

 

or am I missing something?

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

and why would my drives be more prone to failing? I'd be with you 100% if we were talking about HDD's for a variety of reasons, but it was my understanding that SSD's are basically only limited to number of writes.... they rarely fail otherwise. with 1 500 000 hours MTBF, that's 171 years of powered on time before the drive should fail (on average). that's 24/7/365 for 171 years with power running through it. I use my PC only a few couple hours a day so that number of years is massively higher in actuality.

So when we talk about writes, in raid 0 each drive is only going to experience half of the writes so each one should live twice as long by that perspective (which is the most typical way SSD's die from my understanding)

 

or am I missing something?

They wouldn't be more prone to failing, but since the data is split on both, having two drives doubles the chance that a failure corrupts your raid array.

Also raid 0 is unreliable because even jsut a flipped bit in the wrong place can corrupt the array and lose everything, without a drive failure.

Something like a power outage, power surge, or just the fact that motherboard raid is usually crappy.

 

Compared to a single 1TB drive, it will have the same endurance, because the 1TB drive has double the nand of a 500GB drive, essentially the same as having two 500GB drives.

So yeah, if you're going to do raid either get a proper raid controller or back up your data regularly.

 

Either way raid is pointless on nvme unless your job is video editing or data analysis or something that actually uses over 3GBps.

Other than that, there is 0 difference to normal programs, games, boot time, etc.

[Zyndo]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Compared to a single 1TB drive, it will have the same endurance, because the 1TB drive has double the nand of a 500GB drive, essentially the same as having two 500GB drives.

Yes, my point was that having 2 smaller drives wouldn't increase the risk of a drive failure compared to a single larger drive, sorry for not specifying.

and I don't really have anything terribly important on my computer. at worst I lose a couple save files on my games and that is that. I mostly just wanted to try it out to see if it's as volatile and dangerous as people (and you apparently) seem to make it out to be. My experience will be anecdotal and not really all that useful empirically... but It just doesn't make sense, the sheer paranoia surrounding this technology, with often no substantiated claims to support their theory... So I do appreciate you went a little further to backup your claims with random, often unpredictable, events which can result in RAID problems but are otherwise mostly harmless for a single drive.


anywho, the point of this thread wasn't the debate about RAID0, i'ma be doing it whether you guys like it or not but I do appreciate the unanimous input on a fresh install.



But now I have a second question... Everyone's recommendation of backups... what do you guys recommend for that? I've always just used system images the few times i've ever wanted to create a backup, but apparently system images and RAID 0 doesn't really seem doable or feesible (or i'm just a moron). So what kind of backup do you guys recommend? I have windows 10 Home and a 4TB WD MyBook external drive.

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

Yes, my point was that having 2 smaller drives wouldn't increase the risk of a drive failure compared to a single larger drive, sorry for not specifying.
 

The failure risk comes from flipped bits and controller problems and other stuff between the sata interface and the nand.

The nand itself will not fail for hundreds of years.

Having two drives is still double the risk of one.

 

4 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

My experience will be anecdotal and not really all that useful empirically... but It just doesn't make sense, the sheer paranoia surrounding this technology, with often no substantiated claims to support their theory... So I do appreciate you went a little further to backup your claims with random, often unpredictable, events which can result in RAID problems but are otherwise mostly harmless for a single drive.

 

[Zyndo]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Snip

It's good to see you aren't listening... but thanks for the video. I shall watch it and cherish Dimitri's goofy voice

[Enderman]

Just now, Zyndo said:

It's good to see you aren't listening... but thanks for the video. I shall watch it and cherish Dimitri's goofy voice

I don't think you understand.

Two drives have double the risk of a single one when the data is striped in raid 0.

This has nothing to do with the nand failing.

Just because a 1TB drive has twice the nand storage as a 500 does not mean it is twice as likely as failing.

[nosirrahx]

7 hours ago, Zyndo said:

Quote

And why is that? would that number/performance change beneficially with a smaller/larger stripe size?

It has to do with the overhead created when spreading out and cataloging that spread out data. Essentially RAID is not great when it comes to organizing small fragments of randomly located data. In general storage is not good at this and RAID only makes it worse. As far as stripe size goes, it has been extensively tested:

http://www.overclock.net/forum/320-raid-controllers-software/1535527-ssd-raid-0-stripe-size-differences-benchmarks-raid-0-mixing-different-drives-vs-same-drive-benchmarks.html
 

4K read/write does not even seem to notice stripe size.