[SOLVED] SSD's in RAID with 1 physical M.2 slot on mobo

[Joka001]

Can I put 2x NVMe in RAID 0 if the two drivers aren't on the two slots on the motherboard?

Hi, i want to buy 2x NVMe Samsung 970 500GB and i want to merge or put them in Raid 0. On my motherboard I can put only one nvme because there is only one slot under the proccesor. For the second NVMe i thought to buy M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe Adapter. So my qusetion would be can i put them in raid 0 if one is on motherboard and one is on PCIe slot ? Thanks

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Make and model of the motherboard you want to pair the SSD's in RAID 0, with? Some boards will not cooperate with PCIe riser cards for SSD's and they will be in standalone mode, most of the time, not in RAID. Add your processor for good measure in this discussion.

 

[Joka001]

Hi,
My proccesor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6400 CPU @ 2.70GHz and my motherboard is GA-H270-HD3 (link) https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-H270-HD3-rev-10 .

 

[Endre]

Can I put 2x NVMe in RAID 0 if the two drivers aren't on the two slots on the motherboard?

Hi, i want to buy 2x NVMe Samsung 970 500GB and i want to merge or put them in Raid 0. On my motherboard I can put only one nvme because there is only one slot under the proccesor. For the second NVMe i thought to buy M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe Adapter. So my qusetion would be can i put them in raid 0 if one is on motherboard and one is on PCIe slot ? Thanks

I’m afraid you won’t be able to.

Right as we speak, I run my PC off a RAID_0 boot drive (2x Samsung 970 PRO 1TB) on a Z390 motherboard that has 3 M.2 slots.

I was able to create bootable RAID volumes if both SSDs were installed in the M.2 slots.

But it didn’t work if I tried using one SSD in an M.2 slot, and the other one, installed through an M.2/PCIe adapter add-in card, in any of the PCIe slots!

Reasons:

1. Consumer level motherboards do not have a function named: “bifurcation”.
2. You cannot make bootable PCIe RAID volumes on a consumer level Intel platform, unless you’re using Intel drives.

For PCIe RAID, you’d need a PCIe controller which has the bifurcation feature.
Those cost around $200!
And you should use Intel SSDs only.

 

[geofelt]

Moot question.
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
In fact, if your block of data were to be spanned on two drives, random times would be greater.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.

Here is a older study using ssd devices in raid-0.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

And a newer report:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449-4.html

Spoiler... no benefit at all.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi, i want to buy 2x NVMe Samsung 970 500GB and i want to merge or put them in Raid 0

Why?
What benefit are you looking for?

 

[Endre]

Moot question.
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
In fact, if your block of data were to be spanned on two drives, random times would be greater.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.

Here is a older study using ssd devices in raid-0.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

And a newer report:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449-4.html

Spoiler... no benefit at all.

BENEFITS!
The only benefits that I was able to gain by creating a RAID_0 boot volume using 2x Samsung 970 PRO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDs, are:

1. A jump in sequential write speed, from 2700MB/s to 3440MB/s.

2. Less, but larger, drive partitions.

3. Both drives are running cooler as they share workloads (HWiNFO reports 38-39 celsius degrees while running light tasks).

4. Doubling the cache size from 1GB, to 2GB LPDDR4.
Meaning that those speed bursts will last longer.

DOWNSIDES:
1. If I remove the BIOS battery or update the BIOS version, that resets the CMOS, meaning that the RAID_0 volume will be lost! (With all of its info).
Drive backups are essential in this case!

 

[USAFRet]

1. How often do people move large blocks of data where that sequential speed bump would actually make a difference? Benchmarks are one thing, user facing difference is something else completely.

 

[Endre]

1. How often do people move large blocks of data where that sequential speed bump would actually make a difference? Benchmarks are one thing, user facing difference is something else completely.

That depends on your daily tasks.
In my case, I work with huge sound libraries!
Some of them take hundreds of GB of space on the drive!
Loading a single sound might mean dozens of GB!

 

[Joka001]

So what if i have windows on one ssd and this 2x nvme want to be in raid 0 only without windows on them?

 

[Endre]

So what if i have windows on one ssd and this 2x nvme want to be in raid 0 only without windows on them?

You can do a RAID configuration using Windows disk management.
But please keep in mind the fact that if you’ll have to re-install Windows clean, you’ll lose the RAID volume with all of its data.
That is one of the reasons why BIOS configured RAID volumes are better.

It’s crucial to have drive backups when running RAID_0!

 

[USAFRet]

So what if i have windows on one ssd and this 2x nvme want to be in raid 0 only without windows on them?

Why are you looking to do the RAID, specifically?
What will you use this system for?