2 or more HDD + SDD (set up for Intel Smart Response) in RAID 0 with external Backup possible/good idea?

[Sexydadbod]

Hello friends!

I have some extra HDD's laying around and am a bit short on hard drive space and cash. I currently have a 1TB WD Velociraptor HDD and 60GB SSD running in RAID 0 (Intel Smart Response) with a 5TB external backup. This is all attached to my Asus Z87 Pro motherboard. My question is can I use the extra HDD drive (or drives) with the 1TB HDD and 60GB SDD in Raid 0 with the external backup? Will my speeds be better/worse? Would the best use of my SSD be simply running in RAID 0 without using Intel Smart Response? Can I still use the Intel Smart Response with more than one HDD in Raid 0 with the SSD? Would the backup need to be a clone or disk image to be restored properly with the Raid setup? So many questions! Looking forward to the answers. Thanks in advance!

 

[WyomingKnott]

My first reaction is: the best use of your extra drive would be as a separate, internal data drive.

First, Intel Smart Response is not RAID 0. It is designed to cache the most frequently used files from the HDD on the SSD to improve overall performance, but all of the data exists on the HDD. Some is copied to the SSD for faster access. In RAID 0, you need two drives of the same size, the data is split across the drives, and if either drive fails you lose all of the data.

Running your SSD in RAID0 with a hard drive would be the worst possible option. You'd be limited by the size of the SSD and the speed of the HDD.

Whether the backup is a clone or disk image is irrelevant to the restore procedure.

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My personal opinion: if you need more disk space, put another drive in the computer. Let the machine assign it a new disk letter. Use it for additional storage. Back it up to the external drive, in addition to backing up the existing HDD there.

Some people will advise you to re-install the OS on the SSD instead of using Smart Response.

Avoid RAID 0 like the plague. It is subject to failure and makes data recovery impossible after a failure.

 

[PhysX_HW]

I'm personally using 4 WD raptors in RAID0, which is madness, in terms of data safety, but the speeds are good at around 450MB/s, and I don't store anything important on them. Mostly games, and steam library. I have a RAID1 array for my documents. Also, I make a backup every week, so there is nothing I should worry about.

If I were you, I'd keep using your current setup as it is, and just add an extra drive for big files, where reading speeds are not that important.