RAID 0 array smaller than total available SSD storage

[CthulhluRules]

Hi
Just created a RAID 0 array combining 3 Samsung 850 Evo sata SSDs: 1x1TB + 2x500GB=2TB. I created the volume in the BIOS setup and selected all three drives but the total storage for the RAID 0 array is only 1.35TB i.e. 650GB less than the total available storage capacity and it didn't allow me to increase it, although it recognized and included all three drives.

I'm running it on an MSI X99A SLI Plus MB with a i7-5820k and 2x16GB 3000mhz RAM, Windows 10 Pro. The 1TB and the first 500GB SSD drives are attached to the two SATA express slots, the third SSD drive to a normal SATA, but which is RAID enabled.

I thought maybe because the 5820k processor only has 28 PCI lanes the size of the RAID arrray is automatically imited in size? Any other ideas and is there another more efficient way to create a RAID that uses all available storage?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Rdslw]

if you do 0 then all drives will use same size. in this example its 500 GB. rest of drive is probably the rounding 256GB is ~240G of usable space. 1.35 looks just like this.

 

[4745454b]

Agreed. Honestly I would just unraid them. Waste of space and drives.

 

[Rdslw]

Agreed. Honestly I would just unraid them. Waste of space and drives.

if you don't need faster & bigger drives (for movie editing or something) then raid is unnecessary.
I would go with raid 0 on 500GB and 1 TB solo. (just for fast OS)
at least when 1 drive die you will not loose all data.

 

[13thmonkey]

Agreed. Honestly I would just unraid them. Waste of space and drives.

if you don't need faster & bigger drives (for movie editing or something) then raid is unnecessary.
I would go with raid 0 on 500GB and 1 TB solo. (just for fast OS)
at least when 1 drive die you will not loose all data.

With raid0 when 1 drive dies you lose both drives worth of data.

 

[CthulhluRules]

if you do 0 then all drives will use same size. in this example its 500 GB. rest of drive is probably the rounding 256GB is ~240G of usable space. 1.35 looks just like this.

 

[CthulhluRules]

Thanks for the reply. So if I just use 2x1TB or 4x500GB it will create a RAID array of around 2TB in total?

 

[13thmonkey]

Couple of points, given that you don't seem to know how raid0 works:
1. What's your backup plan for the raid array?
2. There is little point in raiding SSD's the performance increase is tiny.
3. You are aware that if you lose 1 drive, then you lose all of the data across all of the drives in the array?

What are you really trying to achieve? a single spanned volume?

 

[CthulhluRules]

Thanks for your answers.

I know exactly what RAID is and the main advantage of RAID 0 is to produce performance enhancements by combining several drives into one. What´s the point of running separate SSD drives in which case I would have just bought a single 2TB SSD?

I´m not worried about losing data as I create copies of my most important private files on an external drive and may add an HDD as a back up drive. In the highly unlikely event of a failure, I would simply recreate the array, reinstall the OS and the programs, which is what I did when I created the build.

 

[13thmonkey]

Thanks for your answers.

I know exactly what RAID is and the main advantage of RAID 0 is to produce performance enhancements by combining several drives into one. What´s the point of running separate SSD drives in which case I would have just bought a single 2TB SSD?

I hate to say it, but you don't know exactly what raid is, else you would have known the answer to the question you asked in the first place, size of raid0 = size of smallest drive x number of drives, that's raid0 lesson 1.
The point of running separate drives vs a single 2TB drive, no idea why you would want to do that other than cost.
Personally in this case i'd use storage spaces and thin provision the drive to whatever size you wanted, it'll allow for redundancy, or JBOD and it can appear as a single drive, BUT it does not stripe, so you don't lose everything if you lose a single drive.
Additionally striping drives across sata express and sata (assuming this is what you are actually doing) is asking for trouble, storage spaces manages this better as it is a software abstraction and is much further away from the hardware.

 

[CthulhluRules]

Thanks for the advice.