Mixing two SSDs

[patrick3027]

I bought a Samsung 500GB 850 EVO M.2 SATA Solid State Drive for my Intel NUC Kit NUC6i7KYK two years ago and would like to add some storage by adding a second SSD.

 

I can get a Samsung 860 EVO 500GB M.2 for about 123€. Is it possible to get 1 TB of storage in RAID 0 even if the model numbers are different?

 

How should I configure my BIOS to achieve this?

[IAmAndre]

You don't need to have the exact same model to do a RAID. That said, it's very unlikely that the NUC's motherboard supports RAIDs.

[NelizMastr]

You need two drives with identical capacity with RAID0 or the smallest drive of the array is used for max size. RAID is achieved through the IRST utility, which can be accessed through the EFI shell or through a hotkey. I can't say which, though.

[patrick3027]

5 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

You don't need to have the exact same model to do a RAID. That said, it's very unlikely that the NUC's motherboard supports RAIDs.

It seems that RAID-0 is supported https://ark.intel.com/products/89187/Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC6i7KYK

 

Can I enable RAID-0 and still keep my current data after I install the second drive?

 

[porina]

Raid 0 will probably require a wipe and reinstall if used on boot drive. Personally, just run them as two separate drives. Lot less pain and you're unlikely to notice a difference in speed from raid 0 outside of benchmarks. Raid just increases complexity and risk unless you know exactly why you have to have it, other than because you can.

[patrick3027]

TBH I don't care much about RAID-0, all I want is that all my storage is listed as a single C drive...

 

What happenss if I merge my two SSDs with the Storage Spaces feature creating a single space? It seems like all "data" is erased during this process, but what does that mean? Only files or my whole operating system?