Question SSD and HDD RAID

[Neckername1]

So I am building a new PC for myself for the first time in a while (since 2009) and have a question as the market has definitely changed since I last built (DVD drives were still kinda required in 09 by many depending who you asked haha). I want to embrace the speed of SSDs. I am looking at setting up two Samsung EVO 970 1TB M.2 drives in RAID 0 for extra speed. I also want to have this data backed up. I haven't seen too much on raiding a SATA III drive with M.2 Drives, and my guess is it is not possible as M.2 uses PCIe as an interface, thus not sharing the same controller as the SATA hard drives. My question is: Is there a way to work around that issue so I can back up the SSDs to a mechanical SATA HDD? Also if it is possible, could I maybe use a 4TB mechanical drive and have the 2TB of SSDs backed up to a separate partition on the 4TB drive, and have the rest of the space for media and non speed intensive data?

 

[CountMike]

RAID 0 with two NVMe drives like that is useless, that apparent speed will not be able to be used by normal OSs like normal windows and is more of a bother than of any use. As for backup, even RAID can be backed up by Macrium Reflect. It makes a backup file of about 75% of disk space used.

 

[Neckername1]

Thank you for the info.

that apparent speed will not be able to be used by normal OSs like normal windows

I've seen many benchmarks go against that.
Besides I need to move multi gigabyte project files around for my projects in Adobe.

 

[popatim]

Move you large files to where?
Like most things, they can only move at the speed of the slowest device in the chain, so in your case you will be reduced to the speed of your HDD. If you have a NAS, then it will be even slower, at gigabit speeds (about 109MB/s for me).

So unless your going to get a second pair of 970's and raid those too, your files aren't going anywhere very quickly.

While you can probably (software)raid the raid0 to a HDD, provided the raid0 is not the boot drive, you slow the whole thing down to HDD speed so you are better off just backing up regularly while the PC is not in use.

As mentioned already, a backup isn't an issue. That's rather trivial these days.

What I do is raid 0 my backup hdd's to get the higher sequential transfer rates so in additions to your 'not recommended' raid0 of NVME drives you would have a raid 0 of your HDD's as well. Either that or just get a large fast 4tb SSD to replace the HDD's... BTW - My HDD's backup to my Nas.

Lastly, since your data is probably important. Don't forget about a backup plan. The more copies you have of your data, kept on different devices that can be unpowered & disconnected , the better the chance is that you will have it when you need it. You need to plan for when a lightning strike or fire takes out your entire PC.

 

[Neckername1]

Move you large files to where?
Like most things, they can only move at the speed of the slowest device in the chain, so in your case you will be reduced to the speed of your HDD. If you have a NAS, then it will be even slower, at gigabit speeds (about 109MB/s for me).

So unless your going to get a second pair of 970's and raid those too, your files aren't going anywhere very quickly.

While you can probably (software)raid the raid0 to a HDD, provided the raid0 is not the boot drive, you slow the whole thing down to HDD speed so you are better off just backing up regularly while the PC is not in use.

As mentioned already, a backup isn't an issue. That's rather trivial these days.

What I do is raid 0 my backup hdd's to get the higher sequential transfer rates so in additions to your 'not recommended' raid0 of NVME drives you would have a raid 0 of your HDD's as well. Either that or just get a large fast 4tb SSD to replace the HDD's... BTW - My HDD's backup to my Nas.

Lastly, since your data is probably important. Don't forget about a backup plan. The more copies you have of your data, kept on different devices that can be unpowered & disconnected , the better the chance is that you will have it when you need it. You need to plan for when a lightning strike or fire takes out your entire PC.

Thank you! I plan on still using a RAID 0 setup for the two nvme drives because, well the data will be backed up regularly each night. And that backup will be doing scheduled overnight backups to a cloud service via a gigabit symmetrical fiber (Thank you FiOS). It would be nice to be able to have things such as infiniband or something to be able to get bare metal speed benefits across networks of devices at home. Guess the market just isn't there yet. For those who are conservative on drive speed. I tested a 64GB DDR4 drive one time my buddy set up. Mind numbingly insane speeds, hitting software based bottlenecks for the first time is interesting and hard to figure out. On another note, I think OEMs and boutiques are doing us builders a solid. Their prices for SSDs don't seem to have been updated in almost 2 years or so! Making it more cost effective once again to DIY!

 

[popatim]

I'm fine with that plan too. LoL

And the System builders have been like that for a long time. Order as cheap as you can get it and upgrade the rest yourself.