M.2 RAID1 for Win10 OS boot drive necessary?

[MrCoyote]

I'm building a new workstation based around AMD Threadripper 1900x. How reliable are M.2 drives these days? Is it worth it to run the OS on RAID1 like the old days with spindle drives?

 

[nosirrahx]

Very reliable. RAID 1 is only a good option as part of a larger backup solution. All RAID 1 buys you is downtime mitigation as you can still work until you have the free time to swap out the problem drive.

If you have extra $ to spare, why not. If you are on a budget I'd skip it.

I do RAID 1 mission critical stuff and over the course of 15 years I have needed it once. It was nice being able to finish up what I was working on and do the rebuild on the weekend.

In B4 everyone says it, RAID 1 is not backup.

 

[aigomorla]

I assume your talking about NVMe's

why would you want to run m.2 in r1 and end up sacrificing 4 sata ports?
Each NVMe you add onto that board will disable 2 sata ports.
So if your board has 6 total, you just lost 4 out of the 6.

Unless you really have nothing better to add to those sata ports.

 

[MrCoyote]

I assume your talking about NVMe's

why would you want to run m.2 in r1 and end up sacrificing 4 sata ports?
Each NVMe you add onto that board will disable 2 sata ports.
So if your board has 6 total, you just lost 4 out of the 6.

Unless you really have nothing better to add to those sata ports.

Hmm. I have an AMD Threadripper cpu/board. With 60 pcie lanes I thought that wasn't going to be an issue. I don't see anything in the MB manual that states the SATA ports will be disabled.

 

[nosirrahx]

Hmm. I have an AMD Threadripper cpu/board. With 60 pcie lanes I thought that wasn't going to be an issue. I don't see anything in the MB manual that states the SATA ports will be disabled.

You will be fine, the issue with M.2 NVMe and SATA is a desktop board issue and primarily an Intel one. On a Z170/270/370 you can run low on SATA ports unless they have a 3rd party SATA controller to add a bunch more.

On workstation boards (X299/X399) they plan on you having a lot of stuff attached, its hard to exhaust the connectivity.

I have an X299 board with 5 PCIe drives attached, can still use the SATA ports.

 

[Batboy88]

Just even one big NVME is the redacted. They are Fast 1700-1800mb/s+ Reads, ok Writes etc...
What the Hell..You see that Add on here Crucial trying to sell that slow sata ssd lol

Profanity is not allowed in the
tech areas.

AT Mod Usandthem

 

[Batboy88]

Right now as usual Samsung is GOD with Drives and NVMe whatever they doing over there....
We all now need new ones, smoking the old ones....

 

[cmdrdredd]

Personally if money isn't an issue I say go with a 2TB M.2 NVMe drive for OS etc then a couple 4TB SATA SSD for data storage and a massive NAS (say 8+ 10TB or 12TB drives)Raid 10 for backups.

 

[PliotronX]

I think you may be confusing RAID-0 for RAID-1. The former doubles space and in some metrics performance but you are better off just getting the next size up in drives. RAID-1 is mirroring and normally does nothing for performance (some controllers can read from both drives but write speed is always equal to one drive). There really is no point for RAID-1 unless it is used in a tiered storage volume or a system that cannot be offline awaiting replacement and reimaging of the failed drives.

 

[MrCoyote]

I think you may be confusing RAID-0 for RAID-1. The former doubles space and in some metrics performance but you are better off just getting the next size up in drives. RAID-1 is mirroring and normally does nothing for performance (some controllers can read from both drives but write speed is always equal to one drive). There really is no point for RAID-1 unless it is used in a tiered storage volume or a system that cannot be offline awaiting replacement and reimaging of the failed drives.

Yes I know RAID-1 is mirroring. I like redundancy in my os. I don't want to turn my computer on one morning to finish a project and have it not boot to the os because the drive died. But with today's drives I assume these new ssd drives are more reliable and don't need to worry as much. As long as you keep a live backup of the os drive.

 

[PliotronX]

Yes I know RAID-1 is mirroring. I like redundancy in my os. I don't want to turn my computer on one morning to finish a project and have it not boot to the os because the drive died. But with today's drives I assume these new ssd drives are more reliable and don't need to worry as much. As long as you keep a live backup of the os drive.

Oh, gotcha sorry about that! I would run RAID-1 with SATA but with NVME, just a single should be fine. For whatever reason, even though they run hotter and draw more power, premature failure is exceedingly rare with them. Though since it can happen, running mirrored may still be worth it for your use! Beware of the SATA ports being disabled as aigomorla pointed out.

 

[MrCoyote]

Oh, gotcha sorry about that! I would run RAID-1 with SATA but with NVME, just a single should be fine. For whatever reason, even though they run hotter and draw more power, premature failure is exceedingly rare with them. Though since it can happen, running mirrored may still be worth it for your use! Beware of the SATA ports being disabled as aigomorla pointed out.

I ended up just getting a 500gb for OS and 1TB for data. All data ports on my Taichi X399 still function. Since threadripper has enough pci-e lanes nothing is disabled. I can still add a third NVMe drive. Drives work fast and speed test shows 450-500MB/s write times. I can copy a 5GB file to them in a couple seconds. Lol.
Corsair brand drives.