Raid Array Setup - for only 2 SSDs

[arda21]

I have m.2 for OS and Programs, already installed and booting correctly on win 10.
I have 4 more drives, one Samsung SSD, 3 Mushkin SSDs
I need to turn 2 of the Mushkin SSD's to Raid 0 setup as one drive collectively.
I made sure to read motherboards Raid Instruction for each SATA. (it states Raid is supported between SATA3_0 to SATA 3_5) So I made sure to connect these 2 identical SSDs to SATA 3_5 and SATA 3_4. So I am thinking I got that right. However I already can see these SSDs on windows 10 and ended up actually initializing them and formatted them as individual Regular Volumes with Drives Assigned. Now Did I mess up? I know I needed to do Raid Array perhaps before going to formatting them.

Anyhow I can always disconnect them If I am not mistaken, my question is Do I have to format my m.2 and my OS and start from scratch to be able to set up those 2 SSDs on Raid 0?

I have never done Raid before so I may sound foolish, I apologize from the get go.

The bottom line is I do video editing so I need to do Raid 0 with these 2 SSDs, I know some of you will say it is not ideal, Raid 0, but I want to try this for this setup. see how it works, I save my work very very regularly and very very carefully backed up, so I need that extra speed with Raid 0

Thanks in advance for your time & patience.
PS. I am using ASRock Mobo x99 Extreme4 5960x Cpu with 64gb Ram.

 

[TbsToy]

Go into disc management . You should be able to create the RAID easily there. Striping =s RAID 0.This will not affect the OS drive.
W.P.

 

[arda21]

I dont have to do anything on motherboard's BIOS or UEFI?

 

[TbsToy]

No, not for a software RAID.
W.P.

 

[Dugimodo]

Yeah I'd just use windows software raid as well, it's got a few advantages and is much easier to manage. Make sure the drives are empty, right click them in disk management and delte the existing partitions, then create a new striped volume using them both.

Otherwise you have to change your BIOS settings to RAID mode and might have to load a driver before windows will boot again, then use the BIOS RAID utility to set up the RAID array - carefully drives can identify differently under BIOS than in windows.

Windows raid volumes can potentially be recovered and read on any compatible PC, using the motherboard controller means only that exact RAID controller model will be able to read those drives so losing a motherboard also loses the array, plus the CPU overhead is really about the same for onboard vs software and is minimal on modern systems. Only expensive high end RAID cards do true hardware RAID.

 

[arda21]

Dugimodo, I actually ended up figuring out all the necessary steps on my boards UEFI, switched to RAID mode without losing my OS and was able to install Intel Rapid Storage Tech Drive and drives are currently shown currently (they are also plugged in correct SATA conenctions within Raid Range for Motherboard's specs)

Where I am stuck, which I assume you may be familiar with.
There are these 2 drives that I need to do Raid 0 so combine the space but have faster performance.
when I pick them and Choose Raid 0 it combines the space, I thought the space would come out to be max one of their size in the end for the total volume

Should I have unallocated in disk management before creating Raid Array using Intel?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this as I am going via Intel's route

 

[arda21]

To better explain myself after completing the Intel's Rapid Storage Raid Array for those 2 drives you can see the new drive in Disk Management and elsewhere combine the size of 2 SSDs, however I thought it would be stripping and would only have Max size of one of the drives? You can see what I mean in the following photo, the 2 SSDs that were combined is identical with the "MUSH I" drive so those 2 combined drives volume size should have been about the same if they are really RAID 0?

I am confused Everything went perfectly fine on Intel Rapid Storage Tech Utility and as you can see it is setup correctly as stated there TYPE RAID 0 on that side.

Am I missing something I thought the max size on that new RAID drive should have been 932 GB?

the image file I took screen shot is here:

 

[Dugimodo]

I can't read your screenshots for some reason, it's too small to make out. Anyway a striped array is the total combined size of both drives with no redundancy, files are split between both of them for better read/write speed. A mirrored RAID array would only show the size of a single drive.

 

[arda21]

I am trying again I took the photos of the screens with camera this time:

 

[arda21]

I thought RAID 0 would make the total size of the Raid'ed volume into size of one of the SSD's but it would be faster because it would write and read from both SSDs?

so wouldn't it show up the size of 932gb?

 

[USAFRet]

I thought RAID 0 would make the total size of the Raid'ed volume into size of one of the SSD's but it would be faster because it would write and read from both SSDs?

so wouldn't it show up the size of 932gb?

1. RAID 0 is 2 x the size of the smallest drive

2. RAID 0 with SSD's is not necessarily faster. Read this all the way through:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

 

[Dugimodo]

No, the screenshots look totally as expected. You have successfully set up RAID 0 congrats.
What happens is the data is spread evenly over both drives in "stripes". When you read or write a file half of it is coming from one drive and half is coming from the other. You get the full capacity of both drives, it's just that data is spread across them.

RAID 0 is all about speed and doubles your chance of data loss (but don't panic it's still pretty small) Other RAID types are for protection against drive failure.

The types of RAID that give you less drive space use one or more disks as either a hidden copy of the data to protect from drive failure or they use some of the space for error correction data that achieves much the same thing without losing as much space (needs 3 or more disk for RAID5 or 6 etc).

 

[arda21]

Wow I can't believe I did it, first I built a x99 i7-5960x system from scratch after 8 years (last time I bought a PC and All I could do back then is upgrade Display card and update ram) and now I even did Raid setup
All thanks to people like yourself explaining everything with patience, I can't believe I built this PC and it is working! I even read and learnt about cable management and it seems to be quite stable so far. Thanks again