PCIe card with RAID for M.2 NVMe drives

james73 · 25 Jan 2022 at 20:19

I am planning on a new motherboard/CPU/RAM set up but it'll probably be next year due to finances.

My current motherboard (ASUS Z97-A) has two WD hard drives in RAID1 - the RAID is built-in to the motherboard. I'd like to replace these drives in the short term with M.2 NVMe boards, obviously in RAID1 but the ASUS only has one M.2 slot.

So, what are my options in terms of a PCIe card to do this? I've seen all sorts of cheap cards from China on Ebay but I'm not wanting to take any chances as the RAID array stores all my data.

The RAID array is NOT a boot drive, by the way.

Journey · 25 Jan 2022 at 20:23

So you want a hardware RAID card for m.2 drives?

I'e used the HighPoint SSD7101A-1 and a couple of other more specialist cards but you are talking £400+. I assume that is too much?

If you are getting a new board and such soon, then just buy a board that supports M.2 RAID in the BIOS, most of the new Z690's do and have 3+ m.2 slots.

james73 · 25 Jan 2022 at 20:26

Yes a hardware RAID card*. And yes, £400 is too much given I won't be spending that on a new motherboard when the time comes!

I was hoping there might be a cheap short-term solution.

* that said, what about software RAID options?

Journey · 25 Jan 2022 at 20:29

james73 said:
Yes a hardware RAID card*. And yes, £400 is too much given I won't be spending that on a new motherboard when the time comes!

I was hoping there might be a cheap short-term solution.

* that said, what about software RAID options?

Can you not just replace the HDD with SATA SSD's for now? It's not like they are that expensive unless you are buying 4TB+ drives.

james73 · 25 Jan 2022 at 20:37

Journey said:
Can you not just replace the HDD with SATA SSD's for now? It's not like they are that expensive unless you are buying 4TB+ drives.

Yes, I have been considering that as well. That way, once I upgrade to the new m'board/cpu I can still use them initially and if I think the M.2 boards would be an upgrade at that point, then the new m'board will have that option built-in. My original question was really to see if there's a way to skip that step, but the performance increase in using SSDs over the HDDs would be a boost in the short term anyway.

Thanks for the comments.

Journey · 25 Jan 2022 at 20:39

james73 said:
Yes, I have been considering that as well. That way, once I upgrade to the new m'board/cpu I can still use them initially and if I think the M.2 boards would be an upgrade at that point, then the new m'board will have that option built-in. My original question was really to see if there's a way to skip that step, but the performance increase in using SSDs over the HDDs would be a boost in the short term anyway.

Thanks for the comments.

Sorry there isn't a work around that I'd be confident in recommending, and SATA SSD's are still not slow, I suppose it depends on what work loads you want to use if the M.2 would actually bring a big uplift as well.