Setting up raid with 3 out of 5 hard drives.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

mrshep312

Prominent
Dec 5, 2017
1
0
510
I was thinking about setting up a RAID(5) on my PC, and I have some doubts as to whether or not I can. I have a 256GB m.2 taking up a my first m.2 slot(which is disabling SATA port 1, 3 identical 500GB SSD's in sata ports 2,3, and 4 and then I have a 4TB HHD in sata port 5. The m.2 is used solely for OS and misc utilities, the 3 SSD's are used for games ect. and the HHD is used for documents, pics, movies...all that stuff.
I was thinking about putting the 3 SSD's into a RAID 5 configuration. In my research though it seems I can't enable a raid unless ALL of the hard drives in my system are identical and utilized for the raid. Is this correct? Can I single out those three SSD's only?
system info
intel 6700k on asus rog maximus ix code z270 chip set windows 10 pro
Thanks for everyones help!
 
Solution
androbourne
Well, sortware raids are more forgiving.

As long as the drives are the same size (and sometimes that doesn't even matter). It should be able to do a software raid.

I would do a Raid 5 on the 500gb disks.

Now remember. Raid 5 is good for data protection and ok at read speeds but suck at write. If you care about write speeds. Get another 500gb disk in there and do a Raid 10. You will lose some over all total free space but again all good about a Raid 5 plus increased wired speeds.

And yes you can single out disks when creating the RAID. Just go into computer management then disk management and select the disks you want to create in the RAID.
Sort by date Sort by votes
androbourne

androbourne

Honorable
Jul 18, 2017
2,369
6
13,615
Well, sortware raids are more forgiving.

As long as the drives are the same size (and sometimes that doesn't even matter). It should be able to do a software raid.

I would do a Raid 5 on the 500gb disks.

Now remember. Raid 5 is good for data protection and ok at read speeds but suck at write. If you care about write speeds. Get another 500gb disk in there and do a Raid 10. You will lose some over all total free space but again all good about a Raid 5 plus increased wired speeds.

And yes you can single out disks when creating the RAID. Just go into computer management then disk management and select the disks you want to create in the RAID.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
androbourne

androbourne

Honorable
Jul 18, 2017
2,369
6
13,615
Raid 5 there is a read performance boost and with 3 drives you can loss one drive due to parity.

It still has its usages. It just depends on what he is trying to get out of it. For performance. I'd get another drive and go raid 10 like I stated earlier. Raid 5 is still valid for a balanced cheap raid with some data protect and read performance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
171,314
17,828
184,590


And I'm not really sure about the read increase with SSD's. Even in a straight RAID 0, there is no perf increase.
If this were HDD's yeah, maybe.

And for a games drive? Not even worth the hassle/complexity/loss of drive space.

But, that is why I asked the purpose of it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
androbourne

androbourne

Honorable
Jul 18, 2017
2,369
6
13,615
Raid 5 offers parity across muti drives that can be read at the same time. This is what provides the read bonus. So even for gaming since most games area reading from a local directory, not writing. It would help a bit.

SSDs or not. You'd still get a read increase as that's how Raid 5 functions.

I personally don't think it would be worth the cost to implement a Raid just for gaming. Rather just get a high end SSD. But it is an option he can decide from.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom