Can I use a PCI hard drive with a RAID card?

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noobtastic88

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All,

I am interested in building a computer with a PCIe solid state storage. I also want to attach several SAS drives to a RAID controller. Can this be done? The PCIe storage would be the OS and the RAID array would just be for data.

This is my first ever build with a PCIe card so any help is appreciated. As long as I have the PCI slots can this be done or will this cause any compatibility issues?

Thanks
 
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Eximo
Striping SATA SSDs is usually what is frowned upon as it has no noticeable benefit unless you can manage very long sequential pulls. Most raid controllers can't even handle the throughput. Most boards don't have the option to stripe M.2 devices, and I'm quite certain that PCIe SSDs can't be striped. Effectively they are already in RAID arrays, that is how they get the throughput from the flash chips.

I do actually have a striped SATA SSD array and with the exception of shaving one or two seconds off of game map loads a single larger drive would be better. (I actually need to consider replacing those drives, I think they are about to turn 4 this year and I am finally starting to run out of space 30-50GB a game is starting to be too...
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Eximo

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They are separate discrete devices so it should not pose any problems. Most M.2 drives offer similar/greater performance then the available PCIe SSDs for less money.

SAS drives? Do you really need that level of features/quality/warranty? You would need yet another add-in PCIe card for that.
 
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Eximo

Eximo

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Unless I am misunderstanding he wants to put an OS on a PCIe SSD and run other drives off of a RAID controller. Perfectly reasonable thing to do.
 
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Rogue Leader

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Thats not true, there are many RAID applications for SSD's, whether there is a performance advantage is debatable but there are no issues. Also this is not the question he was asking.

OP this should work fine as long as you're using an external RAID controller and not trying to use the motherboard's RAID. One thing I wonder though is that is some serious performance, expense, and drives, do you really need all that? You'd really need to be moving a LOT of data often to really benefit.
 
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Eximo

Eximo

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Striping SATA SSDs is usually what is frowned upon as it has no noticeable benefit unless you can manage very long sequential pulls. Most raid controllers can't even handle the throughput. Most boards don't have the option to stripe M.2 devices, and I'm quite certain that PCIe SSDs can't be striped. Effectively they are already in RAID arrays, that is how they get the throughput from the flash chips.

I do actually have a striped SATA SSD array and with the exception of shaving one or two seconds off of game map loads a single larger drive would be better. (I actually need to consider replacing those drives, I think they are about to turn 4 this year and I am finally starting to run out of space 30-50GB a game is starting to be too common)

SAS drives are built for the enterprise, and SAS RAID controllers are usually very expensive. Only time a PCIe SSD should be considered is when looking at enterprise class with provisioning and data loss protection. For the average user a normal M.2 drive is going to be good for an SSD, and the motherboard's onboard RAID controller (preferably the Intel one) will suffice for a few 'Green' or 'Red' class drives to make a mirrored data array. If you want to stripe for throughput, then some WD Blue or Black are good. (You can really use any drives, just easy to use WD's color schemes) There are some enterprise class M.2 drives about with DLP and they are about double the price of the consumer class.
 
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