Raid 1 With NVME drives for OS

[mattyg]

Hopefully I've fixed my current issues with my work desktop.
So onto not having that happen again. I'm thinking RAID 1
But
Already having the OS set up. Can I just add another identical M.2 drive and tell the system (somewhere) that I want to mirror the original drive? Without having to do a clean re-install

Win11
Asus X570E MB
Ryzen 5950x

 

[lsg1r]

Storage spaces might allow you to do it but honestly but I wouldn't bother with a mirrored array personally.

If your issue that you reference was the one I found from a quick search of your posts, a mirrored array probably wouldn't have fixed the issue anyway. Both drives would have had the corrupted install/update on them.

If it was me, and this is basically how I have mine setup, I'd have a spare nvme drive and then a fully configured image for reinstalling quickly (or even a pre-cloned setup), making sure all 'user folders' and documents are stored on another drive (moved in properties - locations), which in my case is a mirrored array from storage spaces... then of course there's the external backups.

 

[Armageus]

Absolutely no benefit to RAID1 for an OS on a normal desktop PC - as above, other than mitigating against an actual drive failure (much less likely with SSD compared to Hard drives), it does not protect against corruption, bad updates, malware, which will just be mirrored straight to the 2nd drive.

Arguably you are better off with another drive (ideally a removable drive via usb) and using it to store backup images (Macrium Reflect or similar) taken on a semi-regular basis - at least then you can recover to different points of time, and you can physically disconnect it to remove any chance of backups being also damaged.

You should be able to make a USB connected NVMe drive bootable as well and put a copy of Macrium Reflect on it, so any issues you boot from the USB Drive, and then recover your backup image from the USB drive to your main NVMe.