Raid 0 question

Chimp Paradox · 22 Dec 2014 at 05:57

So I have my OS on SSD1. That I propose to keep untouched.

I have 2 further SSD, each of 256gb that I am considering setting up in Raid 0. These drives are where I would edit video and photo.

My question is: Does it matter if drives are not exactly the same? They are all samsung, same size, but one is "evo" 840 the other is 830.

Will I notice performance increase or is raid only for the OS drive if looking for a performance boost?

Thanks!

crinkleshoes · 22 Dec 2014 at 06:02

Hey,

It doesn't matter if they are not the same drive or even the same amount of storage space.

IE... you could raid-0 a 500GB mechanical drive + a 250GB SSD if you really wanted to (not that you would).

The raid volume would only use half of the mechanical drive and its operation would slow down to that of the slowest drive... ie, the speed of the read/writes for that kind of setup would work at the speed of the mechanical drive.

So it is ok that they are not the exact same model - and with them being similar anyway - you won't notice much difference in speed.

For photo and video editting, yes - you will notice a speed increase compared to using them individually.

Chimp Paradox · 22 Dec 2014 at 06:58

thanks man. what percentage speed increase are we talking about?

What software do you use or is it something deeper than that in the BIOS?

crinkleshoes · 22 Dec 2014 at 08:53

There are a few factors it depends upon... like the bandwidth of your sata controller.

I assume you will be using on-motherboard sata connectors... so you should be ok with only a couple of drives.

With 2x Intel SSDs in Raid-0 - I get about 180% of the speed of a single drive.

That's using the motherboard's built in raid function.

But you can also setup windows software raid... right click on my computer, select manage then go to disk management - if you're unsure - probably best if you find a guide through google.

Little_Crow · 22 Dec 2014 at 09:35

Just keep in mind you are effectively doubling the chance of losing all data held on the drives - it isn't any form of redundancy, only 1 drive needs to fail in a RAID0 array to lose everything stored there.

It's over to you to judge how much of a risk that is. If you're just using it for 'Work in Progress' files, as long as you have backups somewhere else I see no issue and the performance benefits are probably worth the trade off.