Raid or Striped within Windows 10

[briblo1982]

I'm trying to figure out which is better for gaming. I have two 4tb hard drives in raid and I notice a long pause in the gameplay. Would it be better to go AHCI and use striped within Windows 10 or get one big drive like 10TB

 

[USAFRet]

I'm trying to figure out which is better for gaming. I have two 4tb hard drives in raid and I notice a long pause in the gameplay. Would it be better to go AHCI and use striped within Windows 10 or get one big drive like 10TB

"I have two 4tb hard drives in raid"
What RAID level? 0 (striped), 1(mirrored), something else?

Basically, neither is a solution in a game situation.

And your "long pause" may be something else entirely.

 

[briblo1982]

I'm trying to figure out which is better for gaming. I have two 4tb hard drives in raid and I notice a long pause in the gameplay. Would it be better to go AHCI and use striped within Windows 10 or get one big drive like 10TB

"I have two 4tb hard drives in raid"
What RAID level? 0 (striped), 1(mirrored), something else?

Basically, neither is a solution in a game situation.

And your "long pause" may be something else entirely.

The two 4tb hard drives are in raid 0

 

[USAFRet]

RAID 0 with HDDs can speed up disk access. But at a greater risk of data loss.

To fix this 'long pause', one would have to discover exactly why it is happening?

Is it actually during disk access? CPU/GPU choking, maybe?

What are the rest of the parts in this system?

 

[RobCrezz]

Your much better off using a SSD for your Windows and most frequent programs, will be much faster, use the HDDs just for mass storage.

 

[briblo1982]

RAID 0 with HDDs can speed up disk access. But at a greater risk of data loss.

To fix this 'long pause', one would have to discover exactly why it is happening?

Is it actually during disk access? CPU/GPU choking, maybe?

What are the rest of the parts in this system?

Intel 67000K Skylake 4.0
EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 FTW 8GB
16GB G Skill Ripjaws V DDR4
Asrock Gaming K4 Z170
Seagate Desktop 4TB (2)
Samsung 250GB SSD EVO
EVGA PowerNova G2 850W

 

[captaincharisma]

neither would be good in a game situation because you have the RAID controller trying to mange data on the fly which could impede performance slightly. the best situation for gaming when it comes to storage would be an SSD drive

 

[briblo1982]

neither would be good in a game situation because you have the RAID controller trying to mange data on the fly which could impede performance slightly. the best situation for gaming when it comes to storage would be an SSD drive

I know that but the problem is there's not a 6TB SSD drive out there.

 

[captaincharisma]

neither would be good in a game situation because you have the RAID controller trying to mange data on the fly which could impede performance slightly. the best situation for gaming when it comes to storage would be an SSD drive

I know that but the problem is there's not a 6TB SSD drive out there.

why is that a problem? all you need to do is get an 250-500GB SSD drive for your OS and games while you store everything else on your 2 4TB drives

 

[USAFRet]

neither would be good in a game situation because you have the RAID controller trying to mange data on the fly which could impede performance slightly. the best situation for gaming when it comes to storage would be an SSD drive

I know that but the problem is there's not a 6TB SSD drive out there.

1. You're almost certainly not playing 6TB of games all at the same time, so no need for an SSD of that size.
2. If you are, multiple 1 or 2TB SSD's (not in a RAID of any kind)
3. Since you have these drives in RAID 0, undoing them will require another drive of sufficient size to copy the data to.
4. Since you will have this other drive anyway, copy a few games onto that, and see if this pausing issue still occurs.

 

[briblo1982]

neither would be good in a game situation because you have the RAID controller trying to mange data on the fly which could impede performance slightly. the best situation for gaming when it comes to storage would be an SSD drive

I know that but the problem is there's not a 6TB SSD drive out there.

why is that a problem? all you need to do is get an 250-500GB SSD drive for your OS and games while you store everything else on your 2 4TB drive

I like to keep all the games on one drive instead of two

 

[briblo1982]

neither would be good in a game situation because you have the RAID controller trying to mange data on the fly which could impede performance slightly. the best situation for gaming when it comes to storage would be an SSD drive

I know that but the problem is there's not a 6TB SSD drive out there.

1. You're almost certainly not playing 6TB of games all at the same time, so no need for an SSD of that size.
2. If you are, multiple 1 or 2TB SSD's (not in a RAID of any kind)
3. Since you have these drives in RAID 0, undoing them will require another drive of sufficient size to copy the data to.
4. Since you will have this other drive anyway, copy a few games onto that, and see if this pausing issue still occurs.

I have at least over 600 games installed I play a lot of old and new games. Most of the games are on Steam, Origin, and Uplay.

 

[USAFRet]

Well, you can't determine if it is your RAID that is doing this, without another drive to run from.

Your specs would seem to be a fine system.
The vast majority of people play games just fine without any RAID situation.

 

[briblo1982]

Well, you can't determine if it is your RAID that is doing this, without another drive to run from.

Your specs would seem to be a fine system.
The vast majority of people play games just fine without any RAID situation.

The only reason I did this to have one big drive to put all my games on

 

[USAFRet]

Well, you can't determine if it is your RAID that is doing this, without another drive to run from.

Your specs would seem to be a fine system.
The vast majority of people play games just fine without any RAID situation.

The only reason I did this to have one big drive to put all my games on

I get that.
But with Steam and Origin, you can have games spread across multiple drives, drive letters, folders.
Seamlessly.

Which do you want? Convenience or performance?

 

[briblo1982]

Well, you can't determine if it is your RAID that is doing this, without another drive to run from.

Your specs would seem to be a fine system.
The vast majority of people play games just fine without any RAID situation.

The only reason I did this to have one big drive to put all my games on

I get that.
But with Steam and Origin, you can have games spread across multiple drives, drive letters, folders.
Seamlessly.

Which do you want? Convenience or performance?

Performance.

Would it be better to put steam on one drive, origin on one drive, and uplay on another drive

 

[USAFRet]

Performance.

Would it be better to put steam on one drive, origin on one drive, and uplay on another drive

No, that would make no difference, because you're not playing the games at the same time.
The issue seems to be your RAID implementation.

Or maybe something else that we have not yet discovered.

 

[briblo1982]

Performance.

Would it be better to put steam on one drive, origin on one drive, and uplay on another drive

No, that would make no difference, because you're not playing the games at the same time.
The issue seems to be your RAID implementation.

Or maybe something else that we have not yet discovered.

It wasn't doing this in ahci mode. So I'm going to take it out of raid go back to ahci mode where it was running the best.

I would buy a big drive but 10TB is like 500 bucks so I ain't trying to spend that much on a hard drive.

I'm going to do Samsung EVO 250GB for Windows 10, 6TB Western Digital Black, 2 4TB Seagate hard drives, 1 3TB Seagate for downloads

 

[USAFRet]

It wasn't doing this in ahci mode. So I'm going to take it out of raid go back to ahci mode where it was running the best.

I would buy a big drive but 10TB is like 500 bucks so I ain't trying to spend that much on a hard drive.

I'm going to do Samsung EVO 250GB for Windows 10, 6TB Western Digital Black, 2 4TB Seagate hard drives, 1 3TB Seagate for downloads

You can't just undo that RAID 0, and keep the data that is on those 2 drives.
You need to copy all of that off that RAID array first, then undo the RAID 0.

 

[briblo1982]

It wasn't doing this in ahci mode. So I'm going to take it out of raid go back to ahci mode where it was running the best.

I would buy a big drive but 10TB is like 500 bucks so I ain't trying to spend that much on a hard drive.

I'm going to do Samsung EVO 250GB for Windows 10, 6TB Western Digital Black, 2 4TB Seagate hard drives, 1 3TB Seagate for downloads

You can't just undo that RAID 0, and keep the data that is on those 2 drives.
You need to copy all of that off that RAID array first, then undo the RAID 0.

I know that. It's nothing but games on the drive I can reinstall those. That's not a problem. I always backup my origin games on another drive so I don't have to redownload anything. Same goes for Uplay games as well. I backup my games on steam all the time whenever there is a update to any game before I do anything else.

 

[USAFRet]

OK then.
Undo that RAID thing into 2 individual drives.
Reinstall the games and see what happens.

 

[briblo1982]

OK then.
Undo that RAID thing into 2 individual drives.
Reinstall the games and see what happens.

Thank you for your help appreciate that