Question about RAID 0 arrays.

ErikM · Mar 31, 2016

Hi everyone I had a question regarding raid.
Lets say I have a 1TB ssd right now for my gaming pc and I have windows 10 on it, all my games, software, files etc. If, sometime in the future, I desire more space, can I buy another 1TB ssd and create a raid 0 array with both 1TB ssd's without wiping the original drive? Essentially creating a single 2TB drive (which I know is possible with raid 0) but without formatting my original drive.

Any and all answers are appreciated.. thank you!

CelicaGT · Mar 31, 2016

I don't believe you can due to how RAID 0 (striped) works.

mrmez · Mar 31, 2016

Yep, you can do without formatting, but you might need to read up on RAID a bit.
In RAID 0, 1+1=1.

Rogue Leader · Mar 31, 2016

No there is no way to do this. The drive needs to be initialized as a RAID 0 and the array created, when thats done the drive needs to be cleared. There is no way around this other than backing up the drive and then restoring that backup to the array.

If you do want to use 2 drives to create 1 volume you can use Windows storage spaces to do it. It has drive pooling which allows you to do this. It just merges the drives you won't have the performance advantages of RAID 0, but it will work. Another thing to keep in mind, RAID 0 is not for the faint of heart, don't forget an issue on 1 drive will cause the whole array to fail. Enterprise class drives and RAID controllers have cache and tolerance for this, consumer stuff does not, and can lead to tears should you have some sort of failure. The data is striped, so in a failure you will not be able to recover your data (if you're lucky you may be able to recover parts of half of your data).

mrmez :

If you're going to provide answers like this do everyone a favor and please do not reply. Not only is your answer incorrect, its going to send someone on a wild goose chase.

ErikM · Mar 31, 2016

Rogue Leader :

No there is no way to do this. The drive needs to be initialized as a RAID 0 and the array created, when thats done the drive needs to be cleared. There is no way around this other than backing up the drive and then restoring that backup to the array.

If you do want to use 2 drives to create 1 volume you can use Windows storage spaces to do it. It has drive pooling which allows you to do this. It just merges the drives you won't have the performance advantages of RAID 0, but it will work. Another thing to keep in mind, RAID 0 is not for the faint of heart, don't forget an issue on 1 drive will cause the whole array to fail. Enterprise class drives and RAID controllers have cache and tolerance for this, consumer stuff does not, and can lead to tears should you have some sort of failure. The data is striped, so in a failure you will not be able to recover your data (if you're lucky you may be able to recover parts of half of your data).

mrmez :

If you're going to provide answers like this do everyone a favor and please do not reply. Not only is your answer incorrect, its going to send someone on a wild goose chase.

Thank you very much! I appreciate the quick response and level of detail.

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Question about RAID 0 arrays.

ErikM

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Rogue Leader

CelicaGT

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mrmez

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Rogue Leader

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ErikM

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