RAID or not to RAID. 2 SSDs and 2 HDD. (New Build)

[see119ff]

Not RAID or not to RAID. 2 SSDs and 2 HDD. (New Build)

Hello I am a newbie when it comes to setting up a raid. I was wondering what you think I should do.

Computer Use:

1) Microsoft Office 40% of the time.
2) Video (Premiere Pro) and Picture Editing (Adobe Photoshop) 30% of the time.
3) Video Streaming
4) Adobe After Effects
5) Always Multitasking


PC Stats:

1) CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
2) Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
3) Operating System: Windows 10 Pro
4) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
5) Storage:

• One Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive.
• Two Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

More Hard Drives will be connected to this system. I have old Western Digital Hard Drives that I would like to add to the system or at the very least get the information off of them.

Complete System can be found here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/see119ff/saved/

 

[marko55]

Well ya can't RAID the 950s so no options there. Personally I'd put the two HDDs in a RAID-0 but only because i back up my RAID arrays.

 

[see119ff]

Well ya can't RAID the 950s so no options there. Personally I'd put the two HDDs in a RAID-0 but only because i back up my RAID arrays.

Thank you marko55, that makes sense

Steve

 

[marko55]

FYI - I was wrong!! You can RAID the PCIe SSDs on Z170 using the chipset. VERY sorry for the misinformation! The question would be whether you'd actually get any benefit from it. If its like RAID-0 with SATA III SSDs, your sequential read/write performance will scale well but not IOPS. Granted, IOPS on 950 Pros or Intel 750s are already through the roof with just one so may not be too much of a concern.

 

[Stephan_3]

I found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4m2bNOp9BQ on youtube and it does a really good job of explaining how to set this up. I followed the instructions and it worked like a charm