Is Raid 0 worth it for NVMe M.2 SSD?

[baydude]

Was wondering if I should get 2x 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD's or just 1 512GB Samsung 970 Pro? How big of a difference does raid 0 make?

 

[13Gigatons]

Most motherboards have 32Gb/s dedicated to one or two m.2 drives so if two m.2's were raided it may bump up against the limited of the board. Even one m.2 drive will hit 20Gb/s on it's own.

 

[cmdrdredd]

It would make no difference that you could notice at all. If you want to see benchmark numbers and that's all then I guess. I have a 512GB 970Pro and it's always waiting on everything else to catch up. It's so fast that it literally is held back by everything else. If I copy a large file from my 860Evo to the 970 pro it bumps up against the limits of SATA speeds. Creating a copy of some files on the drive literally finishes before the transfer window can appear. I don't think there is any reason to think about RAID with the 970 Pro, I mean do you need more than 3.5GB/s read performance from your drive? In practice I've observed rates of 1.3GB/s to create a copy of a 20GB video file. The only way you could max out the performance would be transfering files between PCIe drives or a RAM Disk.

 

[cautery]

It would make no difference that you could notice at all. If you want to see benchmark numbers and that's all then I guess. I have a 512GB 970Pro and it's always waiting on everything else to catch up. It's so fast that it literally is held back by everything else. If I copy a large file from my 860Evo to the 970 pro it bumps up against the limits of SATA speeds. Creating a copy of some files on the drive literally finishes before the transfer window can appear. I don't think there is any reason to think about RAID with the 970 Pro, I mean do you need more than 3.5GB/s read performance from your drive? In practice I've observed rates of 1.3GB/s to create a copy of a 20GB video file. The only way you could max out the performance would be transfering files between PCIe drives or a RAM Disk.

Where a 2x NVMe RAID 0 would come in handy is when you have the option for 3 or 4 NVMe drives in your system... If you make the BOOT/OS dirve NVMe or RAID ) NVMe, and then add a RAID 0 NVMe array for data, you would have a balanced boot/app/data approach that could actually take advantage of the 5+ GB/s read and 4+ GB write rates.... especially in high bandwidth tasks like video encoding/rendering, et al.

Note: Hardware Canucks (YT) did a vid almost a year ago demonstrating that proved that a hefty overclock will ALSO speed up your NVMe RAID speeds (when using a 960 PRO? EVO?, it made ALMOST a full GB/s improvement in read, and somewhat less than a GB/s improvement in write.

IF you aren't reading and writing large amounts of data to and from storage constantly.... you might not see the diff...

But as I am not a gamer and am not particularly in need of more than the onboard Intel graphics, I MAY try the 2 x 2 RAID 0 approach on my ITX hamshack system.
Even IF I go for a screaming hot GPU, I'll still be using an NVMe OS/BOOT drive... maybe in RAID (I have 2 on the board)... and 4 drive RAID 10 SSD SATA for data... It depends on the testing... IF I sense I am waiting AT ALL on the SATA array, I will split the 2x 970 PROs to BOOT and DATA, and then image the data drive to the SATA RAID in a nightly backup routine.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Real world? None, especially since the 512 models are usually faster than the 256 ones.

It does double your chance of catastrophic failure though, so backups are even more important.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Most motherboards have 32Gb/s dedicated to one or two m.2 drives so if two m.2's were raided it may bump up against the limited of the board. Even one m.2 drive will hit 20Gb/s on it's own.

This seems like the right trail to follow, even if Gigatons didn't fully explore it.

Your motherboard would be relevant for its limitations. If you have a LGA-2066 or LGA-2011-3 CPU and motherboard, there should be ample bandwidth for additional NVME M.2 drives, and additional sockets for them. While I still think of my Skylake and Z170 board as "new," it is the boundary of my personal experience.

If you lack motherboard M.2 or U.2 sockets (do I have that right?) -- you would be using a PCIE x4 card for any single NVME. I can't be absolutely sure you could RAID NVMe's in two different sockets. If you want them to run under a single socket, then you need a special PCIE adapter and x8 bandwidth for it. But you also need the motherboard to support PCIE "bifurcation."

With my Z170 board, I have two PCIE sockets that operate at x16 or x8/x8, and I have a third socket configurable for x4. With a graphics card, there's only one socket left. I use it for a second PCIE x4 NVME used as cache for SATA drives. The board doesn't support bifurcation.

But since I can cache NVME drives and SATA drives to 16GB of RAM while caching SATA to NVME, my benchie scores for -- say -- sequential read are in a range between 11,000 and 12,000 MB/s. And my 4K random read scores for SATA devices is somewhere between 600 and 700 MB/s. I am still wondering what it would be like if I replaced the 960 EVO caching NVME with an Intel (Optane) 900P. But my wallet and my happiness tell me not to waste the money.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But my wallet and my happiness tell me not to waste the money.

Plus, I don't think that you want to make your storage caching set-up any MORE complicated.

 

[Shmee]

It also depends on the motherboard, but for your usage, most likely a 500GB model or larger is best, then you can add additional storage after that if you need more room.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Plus, I don't think that you want to make your storage caching set-up any MORE complicated.

Six of one, half-dozen the other, Bro!

I have Primocache on four -- no, five -- five of six household systems, with a laptop and a 2012 R2 Essentials version of the software I blew ~$100 on. I've never really had any significant problem with it. Certain stress-test programs would ignore the reservation for RAM but just give F*!$y test results or fail in some obviously unanticipated way that didn't make sense. So? Delete the caches when running the stressors!

I've had visions and dreams lately about getting 64GB 4x16GB RAM for less than half the real-world price. When if ever will that happen?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Was wondering if I should get 2x 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD's or just 1 512GB Samsung 970 Pro? How big of a difference does raid 0 make?

<jerkhat on>
RAID-0 is one of those things where if you have to ask, you shouldn't use it.
</jerkhat off>

Otherwise, @DaveSimmons summed it up nicely.

 

[nosirrahx]

4KQ1T1 is what makes an OS drive feel fast.

RAID lowers 4KQ1T1.

Buy the single drive you need.

 

[baydude]

<jerkhat on>
RAID-0 is one of those things where if you have to ask, you shouldn't use it.
</jerkhat off>

Otherwise, @DaveSimmons summed it up nicely.

Actually I bought the 512gb stick late June and space is filling up so I think I’ll need to add another 512gb. Now the question is, should I RAID-0 if I’m already using two identical SSD’s or not?

 

[nosirrahx]

Actually I bought the 512gb stick late June and space is filling up so I think I’ll need to add another 512gb. Now the question is, should I RAID-0 if I’m already using two identical SSD’s or not?

Best option is to add the stick and then mount it as a folder on the fist drive. You get to keep your existing install and a single drive letter while having access to twice the space.

 

[baydude]

Best option is to add the stick and then mount it as a folder on the fist drive. You get to keep your existing install and a single drive letter while having access to twice the space.

I just thought of another option. Buy a 1TB drive and sell the 512GB on ebay. Would 1x 1TB be better than 2x512gb SSD NVMe drives?

 

[nosirrahx]

I just thought of another option. Buy a 1TB drive and sell the 512GB on ebay. Would 1x 1TB be better than 2x512gb SSD NVMe drives?

The speed would be indistinguishable if the drive is from the same family, just more capacity.

As far as simplicity goes, 1 drive is always better.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I just thought of another option. Buy a 1TB drive and sell the 512GB on ebay. Would 1x 1TB be better than 2x512gb SSD NVMe drives?

Yes.

 

[Jason Carmichael]

Some food for thought:

I just figured out how to use F6 during Windows install. Prior, I didn't know how to make my raid 0 bootable. After a bios update, it became possible. I had the 119 GB on the 840 Pro as the "OS drive", and everything else on the Raid 0. (2-250GB 960 EVO). Two years 100% uptime, 100% on all the time, reboot about once every other month.

Personally, with giant ram (I am at 64 GB, with a 16 GB ram drive for %temp%) I really don't see much difference between sata and nvme. But there's the benchmark right there.

 

[Z15CAM]

Also depends on whether your MB supplies NVMe through ChipSet North Bridge SATA Bus or the CPU PCIe Bus - Only the ASUS X470 VII HERO has the CPU PCIe option for NVMe in Raid (Perhaps a gain?).

PCIe4 is supposed to enhance this.

 

[Jason Carmichael]

Also depends on whether your MB supplies NVMe through ChipSet North Bridge SATA Bus or the CPU PCIe Bus - Only the ASUS X470 VII HERO has the CPU PCIe option for NVMe in Raid (Perhaps a gain?).

PCIe4 is supposed to enhance this.

Now that I understand the difference, doing raid 0, nvme is pointless without an X or Xeon CPU.

My write speed is higher than a single drive alone, but my iops is 1/3 of a single drive! This is in a z270 i7 7700 system with an x16 GPU.

 

[Z15CAM]

Jason:
I've been running SATA SSD RAID-0 for a number of years with 2 Samsung 500 GB EVO's on a Scratchpad Partition under an Intel Z68/i7 2700K platform - It's FAST but it's a playground for me and all trash is permanently deleted - ;o)

Be aware, Intel does not like Samsung SSD's doing this and you have to hack your Intel MB Bios to invoke TRIM pass through for other then Intel SSD's in RAID-0.

Can't argue your point re: RAID-0 PCIe NVMe maybe more or less pointless at this date and time. Not that I haven't been looking at this perhaps unnecessary and expensive option but with large Core CPU's PCIe 4 may make it worth while.

 

[Jason Carmichael]

So I did this, ran the benchmark, then I took out the x16 GPU and ran the same benchmark again.
This is a raid 0, nvme, ssd setup.
ATTO is the benchmark software.

I was kind of surprised, but then this really shows that the NVMe on a Z270, appears to me not connected to the CPU, but the northbridge.

 

[iamgenius]

I did it. See sig. And I like the benchmark numbers! Feels good. As for the increased chances of failure, it is an OS drive that is imaged frequently with no real data. Data is on a shared NAS and gets its own special treatment.

 

[ewite12]

I'm about to do it with a pair of 1TB Inland 3.0 x4 (Phison E12) drives for one of my game libraries. Mostly because I prefer larger drives SSD needs a % free and 1TB is ok but semi cramped. I can make use of it though I have a 2950x threadripper with 2 open m.2 slots (I have a 970 evo for the OS).

EDIT: These drives were cheaper than the 2TB 860 EVO I have!

 

[jricardoslz]

I want to know the same thing!
Currently I’m with an Asus Z370i with 2 empty M.2 slots (I have a NAS), so I was wondering if I should put 2x Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250gb (just for OS and some unimportant files) in order to get the BEST speed possible, disregarding the use I’m doing, just want to have the fastest setup possible in my hands. Has anyone here tried that? Using 2x Nvme drives in RAID0 on a Z370 chipset?

 

[PingSpike]

AFAIK all m.2 slots on Intel mainstream platforms are all chipset attached, rather than direct processor attached. And since the chipset link is ~4x pci-e 3.0 plugging two m.2 raid devices in is going to bottleneck them in raid configuration. You can use adapters with the GPU PCI-e slots to get around this of course.