Set Up Raid

[tp95112]

Trying to figure out how to set up RAID 0. Do I set it up using windows raid or the raid controller which I think my motherboard has(Gigabyte 990fxa ud3). This is only for storing games and nothing else, and I will not lose anything if there is ever an error. Using a Samsung 840 Evo and Sandisk Ultra Plus which are both just spare drive.

[TrigrH]

5 minutes ago, tp95112 said:

I think my motherboard has(Gigabyte 990fxa ud3). 

I wouldn't trust the onboard raid controller on the older AMD platforms. No TRIM support for one.

[tp95112]

1 minute ago, TrigrH said:

I wouldn't trust the onboard raid controller on the older AMD platforms. No TRIM support for one.

Isnt trim enabled on ahci and windows 10?

[TrigrH]

Just now, tp95112 said:

Isnt trim enabled on ahci and windows 10?

AHCI isnt RAID.

[kirashi]

11 minutes ago, tp95112 said:

Trying to figure out how to set up RAID 0. Do I set it up using windows raid or the raid controller which I think my motherboard has(Gigabyte 990fxa ud3). This is only for storing games and nothing else, and I will not lose anything if there is ever an error. Using a Samsung 840 Evo and Sandisk Ultra Plus which are both just spare drive.

While I'll be of no help setting up "hardware" RAID (because I do not and will never support it for its' various limitations) I will suggest using something like a software-based drive pool solution, such as StableBit DrivePool. I use it on my desktop PC to have both my 2x 3TB HDDs and 2x 500GB SSDs in separate RAID1 write RAID0 read arrays. This means that the data is write duplicated across both drives in each array, and read striped for faster performance, so even though my SSDs are only SATAIII capable of around 535MB/s reads, I actually get around 1.1GB/s reads because they're RAID0 striped for reading.

 

The other benefit of using drive pooling software (or an OS like Unraid combined with ZFS) is that it's hardware independent - you can rebuild a ZFS array by simply moving the drives to another system should everything but the hard drives fail, and with StableBit DrivePool, I can actually just pop a single drive out and copy files off it as long as I can get any other computer to detect it, so recovery in an emergency is a breeze. With hardware RAID, sometimes you can't even rebuild the array if you don't have an exact duplicate of the hardware that the RAID controller is on. This means you need to buy 2 motherboards or PCIe RAID controllers, and ensure that they're always running the same firmware / BIOS or you may never be able to rebuild the array in the event of failure.

 

That being said, if you don't care about losing the data, then hardware RAID can be faster over software RAID, if setup correctly.

[tp95112]

1 minute ago, kirashi said:

While I'll be of no help setting up "hardware" RAID (because I do not and will never support it for its' various limitations) I will suggest using something like a software-based drive pool solution, such as StableBit DrivePool. I use it on my desktop PC to have both my 2x 3TB HDDs and 2x 500GB SSDs in separate RAID1 write RAID0 read arrays. This means that the data is write duplicated across both drives in each array, and read striped for faster performance.

 

The other benefit of using drive pooling software (or an OS like Unraid combined with ZFS) is that it's hardware independent - you can rebuild a ZFS array by simply moving the drives to another system should everything but the hard drives fail, and with StableBit DrivePool, I can actually just pop a single drive out and copy files off it as long as I can get any other computer to detect it, so recovery in an emergency is a breeze.

Dont plan on doing anything that intricate, in just doing it cause I have 2 spare drive with no use.

[TrigrH]

1 minute ago, tp95112 said:

Dont plan on doing anything that intricate, in just doing it cause I have 2 spare drive with no use.

Well you change sata mode AHCI to RAID then setup. You have been warned.