Samsung 950 PRO in RAID O - Please help!

[Nephi]

Hi Guys.

I would be VERY grateful is someone could help me with my situation.

My system:

Windows 10 64 Bit
MSI Gaming M9 ACK
Intel 6700K
Samsung 950 PRO M.2 512 MB (X 2 in RAID O)
GTX 980Ti
Corsair 600q
Micron 2666Mhz RAM 32 GB

As listed above I have two Samsung 950 PROs running in RAID 0 on Windows 10. Everything is up and running fine other than the following two issues:

1. When I try to install the official Samsung NVE driver I get the following error "Samsung NVE Express Device is not connected. Connect the device and try again."
2. The second issue is I can not get the Samsung Magician software (latest version) to work. The software lists my drive as "Samsung Pro RAID" however all of the options are greyed out. I can't over provision the drive, use Secure Erase, or RAPID mode.

Apparently the latest Magician software doe work the 950 PRO so I can only assume the software does not work in RAID mode? I'm no techie so I'm lost as to what to try or do.

I would be grateful to anyone that could help me get this working! I need to get this up and working for my business so I'm somewhat desperate to get this working.

Thanks in advance!

-Brian

 

[bradly1101]

The Samsung driver install guide makes no mention of raid and a google search of it came up with nothing.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=samsung%20950%20pro%20raid%20driver&es_th=1

Are you sure they're "RAIDable?"

 

[bradly1101]

You can RAID Intel 750's, so it's not a limitation of NVMe:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Intel-Skylake-Z170-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Tested-PCIe-and-SATA-RAID/PCIe-RAID-Resu

 

[Brian Stirling]

I'm not sure I see the efficacy of RAID 0 with PCIe SSD. If you got it to work I'm not sure you'd notice much of a difference and with RAID 0 you have zero tolerance and if something goes wrong you tend to lose everything.

No, what I'd do is operate them as separate drives with one running the OS and apps and the other scratch and working storage. Then you could dedicate larger HD's for bulk storage.


Brian

 

[bradly1101]

Separate drives can work really well. I have the OS and storage on an SATA SSD, and programs, the page file, and caches for programs on an NVMe. It's all super fast.

 

[Coup27]

I'm not sure I see the efficacy of RAID 0 with PCIe SSD. If you got it to work I'm not sure you'd notice much of a difference and with RAID 0 you have zero tolerance and if something goes wrong you tend to lose everything.

Agreed. There will be no benefit in running these drives in RAID0.

 

[Hellhammer]

As far as I know, the Samsung NVMe driver nor Magician works when 950 PROs are configured in RAID using Intel RST. The reason is that Intel RST works at the BIOS/UEFI level, meaning that the OS doesn't have direct access to the drives (you only see one device/volume). There is nothing to worry, though, because with RAID the driver in use is Intel's RST driver and the Magician functions are usually not needed unless there's a problem, and Magician will function formally if you un-RAID the drives.

 

[Coup27]

As far as I know, the Samsung NVMe driver nor Magician works when 950 PROs are configured in RAID using Intel RST. The reason is that Intel RST works at the BIOS/UEFI level, meaning that the OS doesn't have direct access to the drives (you only see one device/volume). There is nothing to worry, though, because with RAID the driver in use is Intel's RST driver and the Magician functions are usually not needed unless there's a problem, and Magician will function formally if you un-RAID the drives.

Would there not be a penalty for running NVMe drives without the NVMe driver?

 

[Palorim12]

Would there not be a penalty for running NVMe drives without the NVMe driver?

The drive might not run as best as it should.

 

[Kaido]

OP, if you're still around:

1. Were you successful, and if so, what were your r/w speeds on an NVMe RAID 0 setup?

2. What were your BIOS settings to get Win10 installed?

I'm doing a similar project right now (raiding up a pair of Samsungs for a boot drive); I can get a single drive recognized & installed, but I can't get Server 2012 to boot up on an RST array under UEFI (2008 gets as far as the install screen, but won't recognize any of my thumb drives or portable optical drives, and I haven't tried Win7 yet). I'll give it a shot with Legacy RAID later, but I'd prefer to take advantage of UEFI (with CSM disabled). The RAID array builds & displays correct (RAID 0 or RAID 1) in BIOS, so there must be some combination of settings I'm missing (I'm using a GA-Z170X-Gaming 7, which has dual onboard M.2 drives with RAID support). Proper info on setup is hard to come by!

Side note, these little NVME drives whip the pants off everything! I've used everything from the Intel 750 to OWC Accelsior to FusionIO to G.Skill Phoenix drives & Samsung's 950 Pro drives spank them all. Just did a quick single-drive test & got 2,598 MB/s read & 1528 MB/s write under the 32GiB CrystalDiskMark test. Phenomenal! Amazing product for $327 USD.