2 SSD in Raid0 , + separate HDDs ?

[Supaplex]

Hello,

First time doing a Raid0 setup with couple of "old" SDDs i got around (both samsung SSD 840 120gb)

And as im reading through articles and threads on how it's done, I'm curious whether there's any conflict in a setup where I obviously need to enable RAID instead of AHCI, and so i'm going to have 2 SSDs in RAID 0, and 3 additional HDDs separately just plugged in... Will this work ? Is there something specific I need to watch out for ? And lastly does it matter what SATA slots I use ? ( SSDs go to SATA, not mSATA)

My motherboard is MSI Z87-GD65

Right now its honestly plugged in kind of wherever it fits, SSD is in SATA 6, (other ssd isnt plugged in yet), HDDS are in SATA 5, 4 and 3.

Thank you

 

[Andy_K]

When you go to the raid controller to set up the raid 0, you should just be able to set which disks are member disks, the other non-member disks should operate as normal.
Some motherboards require the raided drives to be on specific sata ports, but not always.

 

[Supaplex]

Thank you, happy to hear that. I'm also reading lots and lots of of huge warnings to never use raid0 because of higher corrupted data chance, slower speed and all that kind of stuff... While I understand the problematic, is it something a casual person should really be concerned with ? I'm having huge storage trouble with 120gb ssd nowadays, and got another one practically for free, so thought to save 100-170€ and put those two together... Should it be okay, or is it multiple times better to rather buy a 240 - 500gb SSD anyway and ditch those two i have ? ( i doubt this option, just the warnings of people on all posts feel so threatening as if they werent warnings at all but rather certain doom of all files and ssds in raid0)

Lots of mentions of either drive failing and losing all the data, therefore twice the chance, but is that specific fail rate for EACH separately higher because they're in raid0, or is it the same anyway... in other words, if this drive is destined to fail in 2 years, and another one is destined to fail in 10 years, will the first one SUDDENLY fail in 1 year because of this ?

 

[Andy_K]

Thank you, happy to hear that. I'm also reading lots and lots of of huge warnings to never use raid0 because of higher corrupted data chance, slower speed and all that kind of stuff... While I understand the problematic, is it something a casual person should really be concerned with ? I'm having huge storage trouble with 120gb ssd nowadays, and got another one practically for free, so thought to save 100-170€ and put those two together... Should it be okay, or is it multiple times better to rather buy a 240 - 500gb SSD anyway and ditch those two i have ? ( i doubt this option, just the warnings of people on all posts feel so threatening as if they werent warnings at all but rather certain doom of all files and ssds in raid0)

I think you will be fine running them in raid 0, however if one of them dies - expect to have to re-install.
make sure you keep your important data elsewhere.

I'd start saving for a larger SSD whilst you are using the two as a single disk.

also - you could raid 5 your main disks and gain redundancy, so if one disk fails you can just replace it and rebuild all the data.
I've recently setup a 3 x 5tb array (which gives 10tb as you lose the capacity of one disk) of perfectly safe data storage (unless two disks happen to die at the exact same time)

 

[Supaplex]

I most likely won't really benefit from RAID whatsoever, I'm also fine with having multiple drives working separately, and don't require higher speed. Whole point was that I wanted to plug in second SSD, and someone pointed out that i GOTTA do raid0 its the best thing ever. Now after more searching and reading, I see the speed increase is supposedly unnoticable for gaming, and that the actual wear and damage per time on the drives is supposedly higher in raid0 ?

In that case, is there really any problem with running second ssd separately, still in AHCI, and just use this one for windows and all the applications, and second one for all the size heavy games ?

 

[USAFRet]

SSD + RAID 0;
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

Zero performance gain, increased fail potential.
And with a RAID 0, if either drive fails, or the RAID controller fails...ALL data across both drives is lost.

Just use 1 of the 840's for the OS and applications, and the other for other stuff. Just leave them as individual drives, with their own drive letter.

 

[Supaplex]

SSD + RAID 0;
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

Zero performance gain, increased fail potential.
And with a RAID 0, if either drive fails, or the RAID controller fails...ALL data across both drives is lost.

Just use 1 of the 840's for the OS and applications, and the other for other stuff. Just leave them as individual drives, with their own drive letter.

Thank you, sounds about right... at first i was overwhelmed by recommendations to go for RAID0, so much that i thought there's some negative in just having them individual... While honestly it will save me time to plug it all in, set it up, reinstall windows... this way I'll just plug the ssd, format it and i'm ready to use it in a matter of 2 minutes.

 

[USAFRet]

SSD + RAID 0;
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

Zero performance gain, increased fail potential.
And with a RAID 0, if either drive fails, or the RAID controller fails...ALL data across both drives is lost.

Just use 1 of the 840's for the OS and applications, and the other for other stuff. Just leave them as individual drives, with their own drive letter.

Thank you, sounds about right... at first i was overwhelmed by recommendations to go for RAID0, so much that i thought there's some negative in just having them individual... While honestly it will save me time to plug it all in, set it up, reinstall windows... this way I'll just plug the ssd, format it and i'm ready to use it in a matter of 2 minutes.

Exactly. SSD's have made the RAID 0 concept very outdated.
My main system has 5 x SSD. Each with their own purpose, no RAID 0 in sight.

 

[Andy_K]

I most likely won't really benefit from RAID whatsoever, I'm also fine with having multiple drives working separately, and don't require higher speed. Whole point was that I wanted to plug in second SSD, and someone pointed out that i GOTTA do raid0 its the best thing ever. Now after more searching and reading, I see the speed increase is supposedly unnoticable for gaming, and that the actual wear and damage per time on the drives is supposedly higher in raid0 ?

In that case, is there really any problem with running second ssd separately, still in AHCI, and just use this one for windows and all the applications, and second one for all the size heavy games ?

Raid 0 can give decent improvements or slight slowdowns, You may notice faster load times in Raid 0, but you'll be putting equal wear on both disks, as opposed to putting wear on one at a time.

There's nothing saying your HAVE to use raid 0, if you are happy with the capacity and performance with them separately then keep them seperate