Running 2 SSDs in raid

[Memes on Wheels]

Basically I bought 2 identical SSDs, they are Samsung 840 Series 120GB. I was wanting to use one for OS and frequently used program, one for Most played Steam games and a HDD for basic storage. Unfortunately my old hard drive broke and I'm just surviving off 240GB atm which is dismal. I want to run these in raid but I don't really know what that means or how to do it, if anyone could maybe do a simple step by step list of instructions or take me through it I would be grateful for their help.

[{AMI}SirMisAlot]

the raid is not going to improve your system speed much seeing that youre allready using ssd drives.use one for your windows/boot drive and the second for your programes and games as space allowes.
that how mine are configured.I just direct what i need to install on the second drive.
steam.teamspeak,system programs all stay on c:
the games for steam are installed on the second drive.if the game is one i play alot i will keep it on the c drive.

just my 3 cents

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Is your old HDD under warranty? Check it online via the manufactor's website and RMA it if it still is covered.

Without any secondary drive present atm, RAID is the last thing u want to do.
Performance wise you'd hardly notice that, given you already have SSD, that alone is enough for the most part to see a difference.

Best bet for now would be install your OS fresh to one SSD and use the 2nd one for games. Or if u don't really need the 2nd SSD, return it.

[NixNothing]

yeah, Like Sir said, raid is.. well a waste for SSD.

This is basically how RAID works though. there are 2 raid types that are most often used by consumers (working off of memory so correct me if i am wrong)

RAID 0 and RAID 1

RAID 0 is when you have 2 drives (usually Disk-based) and RAID 0 basically splits all your data in half and puts half of it on the first drive, and half of it on the second drive. It greatly increases speed for disk-based hard drives, but there is a drawback...If 1 drive fails, nothing on the second drive will work

then there is RAID 1. RAID 1 helps to protect you data, RAID1 works so that whenever you save something, it goes to both drives (both drives are identicle). Even If drive one fails, you will still be able to boot and have all your data. Drawback is that it is a little slower i believe.

bottom line - If you are a consumer, and you have a fast SSD drive (or 2) and a big storage drive, then you are pretty much set. Raid usually isnt too usufull on the consumer level (save RAID 0 if you have 2 spare drives and no SSD)

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes in short;

RAID-0 (Data Striping=Performance) ~ combines two alike drives in order to increase performance by striping the data. Basically all the 0's on drive one and all the 1's on drive two. Thus 2x 120GB drives in RAID-0 would end up being 1x 240GB in Windows, that are forever linked (as long as wish data to stay intact anyways), allowing a performance gain. But again if one drive fails, the entire setup and data are lost.

RAID-1 (Data Mirroring=Integtrity) ~ works where u combine drives as a means of data mirroring, an exact copy of data from one drive is always mirrored on the second drive, as a means of automatic hardware backup. Multiple drives making up one array. If one drive fails, u physically replace it and rebuild the array via software (or via the RAID ROM). The downside is you need multiple drives to make up the array, but you only get the space of that first drive. So 2x 120GB drives become 1x 120GB in Windows. As all of the main 120GB is mirrored on to the 2nd drive.

These two modes above are just the most common. There are other modes, but they usually require more than 2 drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

[[UFO] rad87gn]

I agree with Bad. RAID 0 is very low risk unless you are supporting business critical data which a gaming system is NOT. Just save the user directory game saves or it's on the cloud. Using just 1 drive is just as high of risk. ;-) Rest of games and software is download from Steam or your other game provider or on a DVD (i.e. the OS) or can be downloaded from the Internet (usually drivers) Only thing that can mess you up is the network card driver but Win 7 and 8 can get you rolling out of the box.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by rad87gn:

I agree with Bad. RAID 0 is very low risk unless you are supporting business critical data which a gaming system is NOT. Just save the user directory game saves or it's on the cloud. Using just 1 drive is just as high of risk. ;-) Rest of games and software is download from Steam or your other game provider or on a DVD (i.e. the OS) or can be downloaded from the Internet (usually drivers) Only thing that can mess you up is the network card driver but Win 7 and 8 can get you rolling out of the box.

Sure it's just as risky as a single drive, as there is no mirrored backup. But by using RAID-0 with 2 drives to gain performance, you're actually doubling your chance at a failure. Think about it. Plus with SSDs you have that added investment cost.

Overall though, if you setup your OS in a way that none of any crucial data really gets stored there. Or you at least make it a habbit of backing it up, then yes the OS disk isn't important. I always try to setup up my systems this way, so should the OS or it's drive some how fail, or become corrupted. I can disconnect my other drives (that really have the data important to me) and wipe the OS drive clean and reinstall. This is the better means and it makes much more sense. Sure your game drive can fail too, but in the short-term if you house everything on the same drive as the OS, if the OS is an issue or fails, there may be no real means of getting needed data off the OS drive, which the whole point of using seperate drives.

As far as drivers, the OS may have what you need to get you up and running again, it may not. Best bet is to have any wired/wireless network adapter drivers downloaded and then backed up so should u need to reinstall your OS, there will be no doubt about having the needed network drivers on-hand to get you back online, which in turn will get you access the rest of your hardware drivers. Not all network drivers are built into the OS. Systems differ in their network adapter brand/chipset; most common ones are Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, Realtek ~ to name a few. And very few models from those are built into the OS (even Win7 or Win8)

[schnitzeljaeger]

You also have to check if your RAID controller supports TRIM!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

[[UFO] rad87gn]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Originally posted by rad87gn:

I agree with Bad. RAID 0 is very low risk unless you are supporting business critical data which a gaming system is NOT. Just save the user directory game saves or it's on the cloud. Using just 1 drive is just as high of risk. ;-) Rest of games and software is download from Steam or your other game provider or on a DVD (i.e. the OS) or can be downloaded from the Internet (usually drivers) Only thing that can mess you up is the network card driver but Win 7 and 8 can get you rolling out of the box.

Sure it's just as risky as a single drive, as there is no mirrored backup. But by using RAID-0 with 2 drives to gain performance, you're actually doubling your chance at a failure. Think about it. Plus with SSDs you have that added investment cost.

Overall though, if you setup your OS in a way that none of any crucial data really gets stored there. Or you at least make it a habbit of backing it up, then yes the OS disk isn't important. I always try to setup up my systems this way, so should the OS or it's drive some how fail, or become corrupted. I can disconnect my other drives (that really have the data important to me) and wipe the OS drive clean and reinstall. This is the better means and it makes much more sense. Sure your game drive can fail too, but in the short-term if you house everything on the same drive as the OS, if the OS is an issue or fails, there may be no real means of getting needed data off the OS drive, which the whole point of using seperate drives.

As far as drivers, the OS may have what you need to get you up and running again, it may not. Best bet is to have any wired/wireless network adapter drivers downloaded and then backed up so should u need to reinstall your OS, there will be no doubt about having the needed network drivers on-hand to get you back online, which in turn will get you access the rest of your hardware drivers. Not all network drivers are built into the OS. Systems differ in their network adapter brand/chipset; most common ones are Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, Realtek ~ to name a few. And very few models from those are built into the OS (even Win7 or Win8)

You guys need to stop that mentality. We are in year 2013. Stuff doesn't break that much anymore and the risk is low. The calculations on that is OLD. Butter it all you want. The risk is LOW. Period. I've done this for a living FOREVER and done so much. Even my 2 TRS-80 Model 4 dual floppy drives still work. Come on. There is no business critical data involved and it's safe. Chill. Like I said once and a million times I told you where the data is safe. It's fine. Go for it on a gaming system. The performace does out weight the risk. x 10.

All drives you can purchase today has a life span way beyond what most people keep as a computer. Even some of the high end video cards have a life span of 12 years. No joke.

I just put a E10K Solaris system to bed that ran fine since the 90's. And old SPARC systems that have ran for 15 years with a 5 year average reboot cycle.

What a lot of people don't know is that computers are more happy powered up than powered down. Just like cars and bikes. The more I run it, the longer it tends to last. The power cycle hurts more components than anything. That is why I run all computers I own 24/7. Still going strong. Nothing has ever broken. Just my 2 cents of experience and what I've seen in my computer career.

If you want to know how to do it and have one serious stable system friend me. I've done nothing less and will never steer anyone wrong. Every last game I own is extremely tuned and works 100% and is more stable than most people ever see. And half of it is not messing with much and know what you are doing.

[NixNothing]

Originally posted by rad87gn:

You guys need to stop that mentality. We are in year 2013. Stuff doesn't break that much anymore and the risk is low. The calculations on that is OLD. Butter it all you want. The risk is LOW. Period. I've done this for a living FOREVER and done so much. Even my 2 TRS-80 Model 4 dual floppy drives still work. Come on. There is no business critical data involved and it's safe. Chill. Like I said once and a million times I told you where the data is safe. It's fine. Go for it on a gaming system. The performace does out weight the risk. x 10.

I dont know, I've had drives fail on me more than once... may not be likely to happen, but when It does ..IT SUCKS.

Also concerning HD failure.

"I've encountered a few failed (or failing) hard drives in my day, but all of them were traditional, mechanical models. In most cases I was able to rescue my data using various conventional methods: booting from a Linux flash drive, pulling the drive and connecting it to another PC, and so on."

"When SSDs fail, they tend to do so without warning. Hard drives, however, will usually start to show signs of failure by throwing a S.M.A.R.T. error or suffering from a few bad blocks. In our experience, SSDs simply die without waving many—if any—red flags."

"But for the most part, a dead SSD is a dead SSD. If you've ever had a flash drive go bad on you, you get the idea. It's not just corrupted data, which is often recoverable; it's simply a hardware failure."

-PC World

[Illutian]

I would recommend going out and buying a new HDD. At this point you're just melting the SSDs.

For performance. RAID 0 is the easiest, cheapest way. Then just do regular System Images (of the Boot drive only...to hell with the game drive).

You'd also be wise to get a third HDD (cash permitting) and 'Relocate' your My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, My Videos, Downloads (Windows 7/8; maybe Vista?). Along with your TEMP and TMP, Windows Indexing, and Browser Cache.

That will prolong your SSDs and keep with the snappy startups :D

But at the very least...never put games on a SSD you aren't willing to replace quickly. Those multi-Gig updates at least twice a month (if you play MMOs at least) shorten the lifespan. And the gain is faster Load Times......~$200 for faster Load Times. Really? :P