Raid 0 or no Raid at all

[GundamLegacyExtreme]

I'm planning to build my first gaming PC since 2009, and I was planning on using a 128GB M2 SSD as my main boot drive and a 1tb M2 SSD as my data drive, then I thought I should Raid them together instead. Should I just ditch the idea altogether and only get the 1TB, or would it be worth going one of the other 2 aforementioned routes?

Also with any of the options would it be worth adding a 16gb Intel Optane M2 drive? How good is that for a gaming PC?

 

[clutchc]

You don't want to bog down the performance of the SSD by having it in a RAID configuration with a mechanical HDD. Go with plan A.

 

[GundamLegacyExtreme]

You don't want to bog down the performance of the SSD by having it in a RAID configuration with a mechanical HDD. Go with plan A.

So you can only raid if HDD's are involved? Cuz I wasn't planning to put any HDD's in the system at all, just the 2 M2 SSD's.

 

[SinxarKnights]

You don't want to bog down the performance of the SSD by having it in a RAID configuration with a mechanical HDD. Go with plan A.

So you can only raid if HDD's are involved? Cuz I wasn't planning to put any HDD's in the system at all, just the 2 M2 SSD's.

No, I think he seen 1TB and assumed HDD. Really there is no reason to put SSDs in RAID. They are very fast already. It doesn't make sense in your case, assuming you would do it for some performance increase at the cost of losing a lot of space 128GB + 1TB = 256GB (128 + 128 RAID 0). Not sure the rest of the drive would be usable as a separate partition though, never tried to put drives in raid of different sizes.

 

[GundamLegacyExtreme]

You don't want to bog down the performance of the SSD by having it in a RAID configuration with a mechanical HDD. Go with plan A.

So you can only raid if HDD's are involved? Cuz I wasn't planning to put any HDD's in the system at all, just the 2 M2 SSD's.

No, I think he seen 1TB and assumed HDD. Really there is no reason to put SSDs in RAID. They are very fast already. It doesn't make sense in your case, assuming you would do it for some performance increase at the cost of losing a lot of space 128GB + 1TB = 256GB (128 + 128 RAID 0). Not sure the rest of the drive would be usable as a separate partition though, never tried to put drives in raid of different sizes.

Alright, so just keep it at the 128gb being the boot drive, and the 1TB for loading my games and what not? Or should I just ditch the 128gb one all together and stick with the 1TB M.2 SSD?

 

[clutchc]

+1^
Yes, I assumed the OP meant RAIDing his SSD with his HDD. Here's an article the OP might want to read.

 

[marko55]

Yeah, if you're using all SSDs I'd keep things REAL simple and just get that one big SSD and use it for everything. Then if you need to add more storage down the road just add another big SSD.

Don't complicate your build with any RAID. There's just zero reason to do it with SSDs outside of doing a RAID-1 just to protect yourself from a potential SSD failure, but then you'll need to buy 2 of the same huge SSD. Best/cheapest alternative is to stick with that single 1TB SSD for everything and grab a cheap external USB-connected 1TB HDD to back up your data to regularly. Then if you ever lose that SSD you'll still have your data but will need to wait for a replacement SSD to install your OS back on to and then you can copy your backed up data back to the new SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

In the consumer space, RAID 0 is highly overrated.

A single SSD will trump HDD + RAID 0.
Multiple SSD + RAID 0 is no 'faster' than a single SSD.
RAID 0 + 2 drives of different sizes is worse than useless. 128GB + 1TB + RAID 0 = 256GB RAID array.

And Optane? Just disregard that. It is simply the newest incarnation of SSD cache for the HDD.