I currently run a laptop but I’m fixing to build around a $2200+ custom gaming PC with an AMD 7900X3D, either a 4080 super or a 7900xtx(still trying to decide on the graphics card tbh). 48GB RAM. I’m going to reuse my SSDs from my laptop which are a 4 TB NVME gen4 SSD and a 2 TB NVME gen3 SSD. but I had the crazy idea of getting a second 4 TB gen4 SSD and running an 8 TB RAID 0 array as my boot drive with a 2 TB backup.
I’m currently using an HP FX900 Pro 4TB NVMe SSD I purchased two years ago in my laptop and intend to get a second one for the raid 0 configuration. there may be better alternatives now but at the time it was pretty much the same as the competition and it matched my laptop so it’s what I have. it gives me about 6,500mb/s read(which may be hardware-limited on my laptop as it should be getting 7,000mb/s) and 6,200mb/s write and I’m keen on experiencing 13,000mb/s read and 12,400mb/s write… XD
i know this is impractical but i want to do it anyway… i want loading screens to go extinct. but i’d love advice on how to set up the raid array so that i can get the best performance possible or advice that the raid array won’t give me any performance improvement with this kind of hardware due to limitations on motherboards etc…
You will not eliminate loading screens completely, a 5.0 drive will get you to the same speed without raiding and we are talking about a 3% to 6% diff.
So yeah unless you have a use case that really need fast IOPS raid 0 makes no sense here Raid 1 still has some use case though.
raid + ssd is worse for anything except “backup” purposes (also raid is not backup). The overhead from RAID actually slows down anything but large synthetic benchmarks on modern drives, these days latency is the real thing to care about and raid adds significant amounts.
This article is from 2013, I know I’ve seen modern benchmarks but I aint gonna look that hard,the difference is only more dramatic
If you want to e.g. mirror for redundancy then that is a valid use case but thinking your going to get improved performance is a trap.
well, I did it. and I don’t regret it for a second! this thing is fast! sure Gen 5 SDDs do exist but this is cheaper and has more storage for cheaper and it’s just as fast-ish.
Before with just 1 ssd:
After 2 in RAID 0:
Installing windows on RAID 0 is kinda hard and fussy but it was worth it I feel.
ive got the spare 2tb gen3 nvme ssd that I will set up as an onboard backup. and i back up to an external drive periodically. and while technically yes you have roughly 2x the chance of the RAID 0 config failing 2x a small number is still a small number. i really highly doubt its ever going to be a problem. a good SSD is just very reliable.
also I’m not operating in a data center or on a work computer where i would frequently be rewriting large data sets this is a home computer that only really downloads a new game once every three months so the ssd’s will face light usage and both of them will face half as much usage as they would have otherwise if i had only one since they are splitting the data and sharing it. unless they are defective from the factory they should have roughly double the life expectancy.
Raid 1 still has some use case though.
