Does spanning a disk impact performance if used for gaming?

[Tcrumpen]

The title is a little ambiguous so let me explain

 

I am thinking about putting in another 1TB hard drive into my machine which currently has a 2TB mechanical drive for storage (wit's also where i put all my games as i only have a 128GB SSD for windows) although my 2TB isn't even half full i'm wondering whether spanning a drive would actually degrade the read/write performance if say game data is stored on both drives

 

If this is indeed the case then i can just offload non game data (Such as music etc.) onto the 1TB drive and use the 2TB purely for games

[Jurrunio]

no difference because each game can only exist only in one drive.

[NelizMastr]

I'm pretty sure Windows won't even let you do this with non-identical drives anyway.

[Tcrumpen]

2 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

I'm pretty sure Windows won't even let you do this with non-identical drives anyway.

I'm fairly sure that Windows doesn't care about the size of a drive as it isn't a RAID configuration

[Tcrumpen]

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

no difference because each game can only exist only in one drive.

You misunderstand, say for example my 2TB drive had 10GB free on it and the game i'm installing requires 30GB with a spanned disk i'd effectively have 3TB storage on one drive (according to Windows) now when the 10GB is used on the 2TB it will obviously then just write to the 2nd disk for the remaining 20GB unless i misunderstand how windows handles games etc.

[jj9987]

If this isn't RAID, then game will only be loaded from one drive, because each application is given one single path from where the files are loaded. Or what do you mean under spanning a disk?

[NelizMastr]

7 minutes ago, Tcrumpen said:

I'm fairly sure that Windows doesn't care about the size of a drive as it isn't a RAID configuration

Right. Just read up on the matter a bit more and right you are. It only applies to unallocated space, though, so you can't just add a drive and span it and your existing drive in it's current state. You have to span the drives from initial setup.

[Tcrumpen]

1 minute ago, jj9987 said:

If this isn't RAID, then game will only be loaded from one drive, because each application is given one single path from where the files are loaded. Or what do you mean under spanning a disk?

By spanning a disk in Windows you can have multiple disks but tell Windows to treat it as one disk, so in file explorer you will just see the C drive for example to have the combined space of the drives you've spanned, where as in reality you might have 2 or 3 complete separate disks

[jj9987]

Just now, Tcrumpen said:

By spanning a disk in Windows you can have multiple disks but tell Windows to treat it as one disk, so in file explorer you will just see the C drive for example to have the combined space of the drives you've spanned, where as in reality you might have 2 or 3 complete separate disks

Sounds like software RAID 0 to me.

[Jurrunio]

10 minutes ago, Tcrumpen said:

You misunderstand, say for example my 2TB drive had 10GB free on it and the game i'm installing requires 30GB with a spanned disk i'd effectively have 3TB storage on one drive (according to Windows) now when the 10GB is used on the 2TB it will obviously then just write to the 2nd disk for the remaining 20GB unless i misunderstand how windows handles games etc.

eh then idk. I myself have two HDDs for games, and use them seperately.

[tikker]

Just now, jj9987 said:

Sounds like software RAID 0 to me.

Spanned volumes data is not striped across the disks, but just written sequentially. When one drive is full it moves to the next one.

 

If one drive is slower than the other and it needs files from both, then I guess it could negatively impact performance a little. I'd just keep them as separate drives though, and keep the game in a single location (physically).

[xriqn]

20 minutes ago, Tcrumpen said:

The title is a little ambiguous so let me explain

 

I am thinking about putting in another 1TB hard drive into my machine which currently has a 2TB mechanical drive for storage (wit's also where i put all my games as i only have a 128GB SSD for windows) although my 2TB isn't even half full i'm wondering whether spanning a drive would actually degrade the read/write performance if say game data is stored on both drives

 

If this is indeed the case then i can just offload non game data (Such as music etc.) onto the 1TB drive and use the 2TB purely for games

Let it be known that you need to wipe both the hdds you want to span before you can turn it into a spanned volume. Proceed with caution.

[jj9987]

3 minutes ago, tikker said:

Spanned volumes data is not striped across the disks, but just written sequentially. When one drive is full it moves to the next one.

 

If one drive is slower than the other and it needs files from both, then I guess it could negatively impact performance a little. I'd just keep them as separate drives though, and keep the game in a single location (physically).

What? RAID 0 is not striping data either. I haven't used Windows spanning feature myself, so I don't know the details there.

RAID 0 can give a slight speed boost, depending on data physical location, but only if it can read from both disks at the same time. If all the data is on same physical drive, then you will not gain anything.

 

In addition, RAID 0 increases the chance for data loss. If one of the drives is dead, your data is gone.

[tikker]

8 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

What? RAID 0 is not striping data either. I haven't used Windows spanning feature myself, so I don't know the details there.

RAID 0 can give a slight speed boost, depending on data physical location, but only if it can read from both disks at the same time. If all the data is on same physical drive, then you will not gain anything.

 

In addition, RAID 0 increases the chance for data loss. If one of the drives is dead, your data is gone.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I always thought RAID  0 is striping. When writing a file to a RAID 0 array it is spread across the two disks, that's why you get the speed increase and the added risk.

With spanned volumes as long as there is space on the disk you start writing to, it will stay on that disk and move to the other only when it's full. If it dies, you only lose what's on the disk that's died, because the data is not spread across the disks. Data on the surviving disk(s) remains intact. So a poor man's RAID 0 I guess no speed bonus, no added risk, just merged into a single drive letter.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

I'm pretty sure Windows won't even let you do this with non-identical drives anyway.

oh yes it does, i have software raided some funky shit  dosent really perform good but it works

[Tcrumpen]

1 hour ago, jj9987 said:

Sounds like software RAID 0 to me.

RAID 0 is striping across all available drives, meaning that if you loose 1 HDD to a hardware failure (for example) you've lost all the data

 

You can think of stripping as an overflow carpark; when the main car park is full they just use the next one, same with stripping a HDD when the first drive is full it just uses the next drive

[jj9987]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I always thought RAID  0 is striping. When writing a file to a RAID 0 array it is spread across the two disks, that's why you get the speed increase and the added risk.

With spanned volumes as long as there is space on the disk you start writing to, it will stay on that disk and move to the other only when it's full. If it dies, you only lose what's on the disk that's died, because the data is not spread across the disks. Data on the surviving disk(s) remains intact. So a poor man's RAID 0 I guess no speed bonus, no added risk, just merged into a single drive letter.

 

7 minutes ago, Tcrumpen said:

RAID 0 is striping across all available drives, meaning that if you loose 1 HDD to a hardware failure (for example) you've lost all the data

 

You can think of stripping as an overflow carpark; when the main car park is full they just use the next one, same with stripping a HDD when the first drive is full it just uses the next drive

Ah crap, I messed up striping and mirroring. Thanks for the corrections.

[Tcrumpen]

6 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

 

Ah crap, I messed up striping and mirroring. Thanks for the corrections.

It's ok RAID can be very confusing; in fact i had to google RAID 0 as a sanity check

[i_got_laid_by_a_dragoness]

On 4/4/2018 at 6:41 AM, Tcrumpen said:

The title is a little ambiguous so let me explain

 

I am thinking about putting in another 1TB hard drive into my machine which currently has a 2TB mechanical drive for storage (wit's also where i put all my games as i only have a 128GB SSD for windows) although my 2TB isn't even half full i'm wondering whether spanning a drive would actually degrade the read/write performance if say game data is stored on both drives

 

If this is indeed the case then i can just offload non game data (Such as music etc.) onto the 1TB drive and use the 2TB purely for games

Don't span disks. It's a bad idea. Just move some games to the other drive.

 

I have about 6TB in my system. 

 

500GB SSD for Windows

 

3TB Seagate for games and programs (including Windows programs)

 

2TB Seagatefor personal files like music, movies, and games

 

1TB Seagate drive for storing game footage.

 

Organization helps with storage management, everything down to my porn folder is organized in a manner that is space effective.