[SOLVED] RAID 0 NVME on Z690 UD AX DDR4 mainboard?

[Calab]

I have a Gigabyte Z690 UD AX DDR4 mainboard. I also have several NVMe hard drives. I would like to RAID0 a pair of these drives, but I don't see an option to do so in the BIOS. Is it possible?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Why? You'll only be kneecapping the drives performance wise and, unless you keep a backup, a single drive hiccup or failure will lose the entire contents of the array.

 

[Calab]

Why? You'll only be kneecapping the drives performance wise and, unless you keep a backup, a single drive hiccup or failure will lose the entire contents of the array.

Actually, I meant to put them into RAID1, to speed up the performance a bit.

I finally figured it out though... You need to enable the VMD, reboot and go back into the BIOS settings.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

You'll actually experience a loss of performance with SSD/NVME in RAID (any level of RAID)

 

[Rogue Leader]

Actually, I meant to put them into RAID1, to speed up the performance a bit.

I finally figured it out though... You need to enable the VMD, reboot and go back into the BIOS settings.

Massive waste of time, with the added bonus of if one drive fails both drives are screwed. And the background annoyance of the array resynching, and if you have a power failure during such a resync since you're using Motherboard or Windows RAID and not a true cached RAID controller, your data gets screwed.

This is a bad idea for so many reasons, aside from the fact you will not get any discernible performance increase, and its actually slower in some metrics. We tell people this all the time. Nobody listens.

 

[Endre]

Hello!

The gains of a RAID_0 volume are in the sequential read/write speeds due to higher PCIe bandwidth and drive cache.
Also, RAID allows users to have larger partitions.

However, RAID adds some extra latency & potential risk of data loss in case of a drive failure.

In my case, having 3 Samsung 970 PRO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDs in RAID_0 as my boot drive is a plus.

That’s my take on this subject...

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Raid is a HUGE pain in the arse on EVERY level of you are a consumer or gamer. Doesn’t increase performance it’s a waste of energy and materials. The only increase in performance you see are in synthetic benchmarks

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, the sequential benchmarks with a RAID 0 look GREAT.
However, that is rarely how we move and access data.

The actual user facing performance with SSDs and RAID 0 can sometimes be slower than individual drives.

Heres a couple of reports, from a few years ago.
I've not read anything more recent that would counter these results.

(SATA III SSD)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

(NVMe SSD)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html

 

[USAFRet]

several NVMe hard drives. I would like to RAID0 a pair of these drives

Actually, I meant to put them into RAID1, to speed up the performance a bit.

No, to either of those.
Neither are a good idea, or particularly useful.

RAID 0:
Striped data across 2 or more drives. With spinning HDD, this could have been sort of a good idea, in a data center.
Speed up access to that billion row data base.
With SSDs, particularly NVMe SSD, a RAID 0 can often be slower than individual drives, due to the overhead. At best, you get 'similar' performance.
The benchmarks look great, but so what?
We don't operate on benchmarks, unless you're just looking for bragging rights among people who don't know any better.

RAID 1:
Mirrored across 2 or more drives. Provides physical drive redundancy.
Can be useful for continued operations in the case of a drive failing. For instance, if you're running a web server, and unscheduled downtime means lost sales.
Contrary to what a lot of people think, it is not a backup.
A real backup procedure not only safeguards your data in the event of a drive fail, but also all the other forms of potential data loss.


tl-dr : In the consumer space, RAID of any type is not a particularly good idea.

 

[Endre]

Hello!

With RAID there isn’t a single good answer for everyone.
It depends on the workload.
For me, dealing with large sound libraries or copying huge files pretty often, RAID_0 does help.
But RAID ain’t for everybody.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Hello!

With RAID there isn’t a single good answer for everyone.
It depends on the workload.
For me, dealing with large sound libraries or copying huge files pretty often, RAID_0 does help.
But RAID ain’t for everybody.

Right, this is a very specific narrow task type where RAID with SSDs would help. For 98% of the population otherwise, its nothing but trouble.

 

[mdd1963]

Actually, I meant to put them into RAID1, to speed up the performance a bit.

I finally figured it out though... You need to enable the VMD, reboot and go back into the BIOS settings.

Bzzzt...!

Best to abandon NVME RAID objective altogether, and, certainly RAID1 as a goal of 'speed up the performance'. (If your goal is peak numbers in CrystalDiskMark sequential reads, RAID 0 works great. Otherwise, it is useless.