[SOLVED] Re-organizing my storage

[Themoniter61]

I'm looking to re-organize the storage in my PC. I'm running out of space and running most of my storage on a 2tb drive that has been spinning way too long for me to not wake up every day wondering if today is the day it will die.

My setup right now:
1 500gb SSD as a boot drive
1 500gb SSD as my "game drive" for games that I play most often
2 HD TB as "Main Storage" --> I can't even remember how old this disk is and most of it is games TV and Movies that I wouldn't be devastated to lose
1 TB that backs up important stuff of Main Storage like documents and photos that I WOULD be pissed to lose. I also have a 2tb external SSD that I backup to once a week,


I'd like to switch it to:
500GB SSD for OS (this doesn't change)
2 X 2TB HD Seagate Drives in Raid 0 For main storage.
1- TB HD to mirror/backup important stuff from the main storage (as before)
1- 500gb SSD as cache drive for Main storage.

I'm running on a Z87 Chipset right now with plans to upgrade in the next year, probably to Ryzen. Is there any benefit for using the SSD as a cache? Or should I just leave it as a game drive?

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

1. Leave the 500GB SSD as the game drive
2. Do NOT RAID 0 the 2TB HDD. Just add another one. Or replace the current ancient one with a 4TB or similar.

 

[Themoniter61]

Ok, so no on the cache, but wouldn't the raid 0 give me better performance than one drive? or is the performance boost negligible?

 

[USAFRet]

Ok, so no on the cache, but wouldn't the raid 0 give me better performance than one drive? or is the performance boost negligible?

What would be on this RAID 0?

And if you were planning on using the "old drive who is about to die" as one of them...that is asking for trouble.

 

[Themoniter61]

What would be on this RAID 0?

And if you were planning on using the "old drive who is about to die" as one of them...that is asking for trouble.

oh no no, the old drive goes in the trash or saved for experiments. I'm talking about two new drives. I would be using it for "everything". IE streaming with Emby from PC to TV, hefty games like Warzone, photo and video editing and general storage of...everything.

For a backup like I said, anything that is "irreplaceable" gets backed up on a drive separate from the array, and an external SSD once a week.

 

[Themoniter61]

What would be on this RAID 0?

And if you were planning on using the "old drive who is about to die" as one of them...that is asking for trouble.

Alternatively, would there be any benefit to one NAS drive?

 

[USAFRet]

A NAS? Absolutely.
Not good to run games from, but for all that other stuff? Sure.

And that will be absolutely portable to your next system. Unlike a RAID 0 now.

 

[Themoniter61]

allright, it seems like the conclusion is that the benefits of Raid aren't worth the hassle. Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

allright, it seems like the conclusion is that the benefits of Raid aren't worth the hassle. Thanks!

I have a 4 bay QNAP (and other things attached to it).

It collects nightly full drive backups from all my house systems, holds the music and movie library, pics and video...
Data in the NAS is directly accessible from anything on the LAN, including the little android tablets.

 

[Themoniter61]

I was referring to a NAS drive for use as storage in the PC itself , not a NAS system (although that's the next step) but i see that drives like the Seagates, Iron wolf run slower at 4tb.

It seems like my desire to overcomplicate things in the search for peak tech isn't worth it the effort,

 

[USAFRet]

I was referring to a NAS drive for use as storage in the PC itself , not a NAS system (although that's the next step) but i see that drives like the Seagates, Iron wolf run slower at 4tb.

It seems like my desire to overcomplicate things in the search for peak tech isn't worth it the effort,

Oh, OK.

A drive inside your PC doesn't qualify as a "NAS".
An Ironwolf is "slower", but not critically so.

 

[Themoniter61]

yeah, my bad on the terminology. Thank you very much for the help!