Question raid 10 profile

Mar 1, 2019
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hi ive just ordered the MSI MEG Z390 godlike motherboard and im looking to make optimal use of the available m.2 drives ive purchased 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB ssd's and already have 2 960 evo ssd's in my current mobo for my raid 10 profile im still left with 1 m.2 slot and one u.2 port what would your recommendation be for the remaining slots/sata storage or a more effective/ cost effectient raid profile im reasonably new to this kind of stuff thanks in advance
 

gasaraki

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Jun 11, 2008
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Yeah... that's not going to work too well for you.

One, you need 4 drives and 4 slots for RAID 10. The godlike has only 3x M.2 slots.
Two, RAID 10 won't do you any good beside give you more space on this platform. You really need X299 or Threadripper. Z390 CPUs don't have enough PCIe lanes.
 
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gasaraki

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the board comes with a 2 space m.2 pcie card im using it for accounting/ video editing and gaming what would be a better use of the m.2's then?

Z390 doesn't have enough PCIe lanes to do all those drives in RAID. Period.
Also the motherboard DOES NOT include any PCIe m.2. cards. You might be thinking of the other GODLIKE boards.
Also the motherboard DOES NOT support RAID 10 on the M.2. only the SATA ports. So your PCIe M.2 drive can only do RAID 0 or 1.
 

TJ Hooker

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the board comes with a 2 space m.2 pcie card im using it for accounting/ video editing and gaming what would be a better use of the m.2's then?
Are you just filling slots up for no other reason than to fill them? I don't understand why you'd want/need 4 NVMe drives. RAID with SSDs is largely pointless. At most I'd say have two NVMe drives, one for OS/applications and one for video editing scratch drive. And then a 3rd SATA drive for everything else.
 
Mar 1, 2019
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my last pc got ruined in a flood recently and im doing a new build i had the 2 960 evo 250g in storage but i dont have anyy other storage devices and i bought the 970 500G evos recently on sale would it be a more optimal config to run the 2 970's and get a larger sata storage device? and is optane worth looking at im just trying to optimize perfomance with available ports https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/meg-z390-godlike is the mobo im using https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-GAMING-X-TRIO.html for gpu 8700k running at 5.1 on 2 cores and 5 on other 4 and 4x 8G corsair rgb venegence 3000mhz oc'd to 3200 mhz budget isnt too much of an issue atm either
 

TJ Hooker

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Ok, if you have all 4 NVMe drives already and want to keep all of them then that's fine. No, it's not necessarily more optimal in terms of performance to run a larger SATA drive, it would just be simpler than splitting all your stuff across 4 small-ish drives. I guess it also depends on your total storage capacity needs.

FYI if you use the M.2 PCIe card you may cause your graphics card to drop down to a x8 PCIe connection, not sure if that still happens if you only populate 1 of the 2 M.2 slots on the card though. depending on which slot you put it in.

No, I don't think it's worthwhile getting an Optane drive.
 
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Mar 1, 2019
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i use a lot of storage space based on business needs to access to old accounting records and ledgers/buisness portfolios as well as using it as a gaming/editing system as well
 

Rogue Leader

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May i ask what lead you to RAID 10?

RAID 10 as mentioned is not available with your M.2 PCIe Drives, even if it was its really not for home use, its meant for high performance database use on spinning media storage drives. For you, 1 minor failure means smoking your Windows install across 4 drives. Really bad.

Anyway gasaraki makes a good point about PCIe lanes. You are limited. The board has 3 M.2 slots and if you populate all 3 slots than PCIE_5 (the bottom PCIe slot on the board) does not work. PCIe 2 and 4 are attached to the CPU, if you use those slots for a PCIE M.2 card (the Xpander card included in the box) they will pull lanes away from the GPU (which should always be in slot 1). PCIe Slot 3 is attached to the PCH but its only X1. You could put a PCIe M.2 Adapter holding 2 drives into Slot 5, but then both drives will be limited to X2 (if it even works), and then you can't use M.2 slot 3. And forget about the U.2 port if you use that then M.2 slot 2 is disabled.

So the TL DR version of what i just wrote, for the best possible performance speed wise you are limited to 3 M.2 drives, in the slots on the board, and 1 GPU. And you can use 4 SATA ports for regular SATA drives.
 
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Mar 1, 2019
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tbh just reading a few articles on raid profiles ive still only got a very basic understanding of the whole concept i was just looking to optimize data transfer i work in a rural area and sometimes its easier to copy data onto a portable drive and have it delivered than it is to send based on location/internet availability
 

Rogue Leader

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tbh just reading a few articles on raid profiles ive still only got a very basic understanding of the whole concept i was just looking to optimize data transfer i work in a rural area and sometimes its easier to copy data onto a portable drive and have it delivered than it is to send based on location/internet availability

Well NVMe is as fast as you're going to get and RAIDing it won't make it any faster. RAID also won't help if you have internet issues, nor will it help copying data to an external drive. Copying and parsing data within itself or between NVMe drives is super fast though.

if you want to copy data to a portable drive with speed, then you need to buy yourself some of these

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-Flash-Drive-SDCZ80-064G-G46/dp/B00DZPUOUI

Thats about as fast as you will get.
 
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Mar 1, 2019
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so gaining nothing from running a raid profile is it worth install the 250G 960 evo with the 2 500G 970's or just go with the 2 970's? and will running the streaming booster draw from the cpu/gpu in the same manner as the m.2 expansion?
 
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Mar 1, 2019
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would it be worth it runnin 2 m.2's then aund using a u2
May i ask what lead you to RAID 10?

RAID 10 as mentioned is not available with your M.2 PCIe Drives, even if it was its really not for home use, its meant for high performance database use on spinning media storage drives. For you, 1 minor failure means smoking your Windows install across 4 drives. Really bad.

Anyway gasaraki makes a good point about PCIe lanes. You are limited. The board has 3 M.2 slots and if you populate all 3 slots than PCIE_5 (the bottom PCIe slot on the board) does not work. PCIe 2 and 4 are attached to the CPU, if you use those slots for a PCIE M.2 card (the Xpander card included in the box) they will pull lanes away from the GPU (which should always be in slot 1). PCIe Slot 3 is attached to the PCH but its only X1. You could put a PCIe M.2 Adapter holding 2 drives into Slot 5, but then both drives will be limited to X2 (if it even works), and then you can't use M.2 slot 3. And forget about the U.2 port if you use that then M.2 slot 2 is disabled.

So the TL DR version of what i just wrote, for the best possible performance speed wise you are limited to 3 M.2 drives, in the slots on the board, and 1 GPU. And you can use 4 SATA ports for regular SATA drives.
so with an m/2 in slot one and 3 id have the option to run a u.2 drive later and it wont effect performance of the m.2's and open another pcie lane in the time being yea?
 

Rogue Leader

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would it be worth it runnin 2 m.2's then aund using a u2

so with an m/2 in slot one and 3 id have the option to run a u.2 drive later and it wont effect performance of the m.2's and open another pcie lane in the time being yea?

You don't need to worry about PCIe lanes with only 2 drives.

u.2 drives are few and far between and overpriced. Just buy a 3rd PCie M.2 and use it in M.2 slot 2. Populating 3 M.2 drives has no effect on performance of any.
 
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