Combining a 240gb Sandisk SSD and a 256gb Liteon SSD

[cheesecactus]

Hi toms hardware!

I've got a 240gb Sandisk Ultra II SSD in my pc with windows 8.1 installed on it. I've recently acquired a 256gb Lite-on M3S and ideally want to have 1 big 480/496gb SSD otherwise i probably wont get much use out of the 2nd one.

Is it possible, and if so how would I go about it? Been reading about RAID 0, JBOD and storage spaces but im not sure if any of them are appropriate, or if there is a better option out there for me.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: I have an i5-4690k and an Asrock Z97 Pro4 mobo btw

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, cheesecactus!

I doubt RAID 0 with two different-sized and branded SSDs will work. However, the JBOD just pools them together and it should work. It's a lot like RAID 0 but without the striping and it also lacks redundancy. Keep in mind that if one SSD fails, you will lose the data stored on both of them (since they are pooled together).
Why would you want to combine the drives though? What is your intended purpose for this configuration?
You won't get faster speeds with JBOD, besides SSDs are fast enough independently. There are users who put those in RAID 0, but most of them need the fast speed for 3D/video editing or very high-end gaming.
You would have some peace of mind that if you keep them separated, because if one of them fails, you won't need to rebuild & reinstall your whole system from scratch (or backups).
You should check this benchmark article from the community though: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

Keep me posted if you have any more questions!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[cheesecactus]

Hey SuperSoph_WD, thanks for the reply.

No i'm not interested in speed increases, just having extra storage space really. Currently i have the sandisk as OS, documents and applications with a 2TB Caviar Black for games and videos.

However now im thinking maybe i should just keep the 2nd ssd as is and just move my itunes library, downloads folder and photos to it instead.

Probably not worth the headache of JBOD'ing them together just for the slight convenience of a single drive letter.

Well, thanks for the help anyway!

 

[cheesecactus]

Well damn.

So i just came across another ssd. Just found an Intel 320 120gb ssd.

So now I have 3 SSDs. A 240gb main one. And now a 256gb one and a 120gb one.

WHAT DO??!?

My first instinct is to jbod the 256 and 120 together and use them as a storage drive for who knows what. But yeah, any better ideas? TOO MANY SSDS!!!

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Well damn.

So i just came across another ssd. Just found an Intel 320 120gb ssd.

So now I have 3 SSDs. A 240gb main one. And now a 256gb one and a 120gb one.

WHAT DO??!?

My first instinct is to jbod the 256 and 120 together and use them as a storage drive for who knows what. But yeah, any better ideas? TOO MANY SSDS!!!

Hi again, cheesecactus!

Sorry for the late apply, I was sick for a couple of days! All better now though!
Your first instinct to combine 2 of the SSDs in JBOD just for the sake of having everything in one place might play a bad trick on you at some point. As I already mentioned you need to have backups of the data from the SSDs.
If you JBOD them and one SSD fails, you will lose the data that's stored on both of them, keep this in mind.
If you just want storage, there are HDDs with much bigger capacities, specifically designed to serve a secondary storage for your system and they are much more cost-efficient.
However, you already have the 3 SSDs so I guess I'd keep them separated in my system, if I were you. I'd use one for boot and the other 2 for different storage solutions ( 1 for software apps + games and 1 for music, movies and other random storage).

Keep me posted if you have more questions!
Hope I was helpful!
SuperSoph_WD