Solved 2 SSDs, one volume for games?

[charkzilla20]

Hi everyone.
So currently, I use a 128gb Samsung 840 Pro for a C drive, and an 120gb 840 Evo for large games.
I would like to purchase a larger SSD for a C drive (maybe 256 or 512) when windows 10 becomes available, and turn the remaining two SSDs into a single volume for games. I know the concept behind Raid arrays, but I've heard some debate about whether or not it's beneficial to use SSDs in an array. I'm wondering if raid 0 ssds would have any visible benefits for loading large games (arma, battlefield, skyrim, etc), and if so, how to set it up.
And if not, is there a way I could simply extend the volume over the 2 drives so I can have a theoretical 248gb drive?
Thanks

 

[GokAy]

RAID with SSDs have the problem of trim not working on some controllers.

SSD is already fast enough so you will probably won't see much improvement for game load times. And probably increase access time doing so.

What's wrong with 2 drives showing in Explorer? If you still want to have only 1 of them visible, you can create a folder in one of the SSDs and mount the other SSD to that folder (done through Disk Management).

 

[charkzilla20]

RAID with SSDs have the problem of trim not working on some controllers.

SSD is already fast enough so you will probably won't see much improvement for game load times. And probably increase access time doing so.

What's wrong with 2 drives showing in Explorer? If you still want to have only 1 of them visible, you can create a folder in one of the SSDs and mount the other SSD to that folder (done through Disk Management).

ok maybe not for speed.

i don't want to have 2 different drives visible, i'd rather have them be a combined volume

 

[GokAy]

You would have 2 options:
- fake-hardware RAID from BIOS/IRST software (RAID0)
- software RAID from Disk Management (striping or spanning) striping is RAID0, spanning is just getting 1 large space.

As far as I can see, if you are using IRST drivers RAID supports TRIM. Software raid also supports TRIM.

I guess when the time comes, you can test it yourself. Start one of the larger games and note how long it takes to load into the game. And then setup a RAID and do the same test.

 

[charkzilla20]

You would have 2 options:
- fake-hardware RAID from BIOS/IRST software (RAID0)
- software RAID from Disk Management (striping or spanning) striping is RAID0, spanning is just getting 1 large space.

As far as I can see, if you are using IRST drivers RAID supports TRIM. Software raid also supports TRIM.

I guess when the time comes, you can test it yourself. Start one of the larger games and note how long it takes to load into the game. And then setup a RAID and do the same test.

ok i'll try them. Thanks

 

[Boozad]

Nothing wrong with having a couple of drives showing

​

 

[JustCall]

Nothing wrong with having a couple of drives showing

View attachment 360865​

I've never seen so many drives
Why do you want so many storage?

 

[Boozad]

They're all pretty much explained on the screenshot except for J: which is my Windows 10 SSD.

 

[charkzilla20]

Nothing wrong with having a couple of drives showing

View attachment 360865​

lonely 10 gigs of virtual machine on drive L
lol

I thought that an SSD benefited from not being entirely full... That's why I was considering a raid array, instead of filling up both individually. And when dealing with games sometimes 25gb+, having a unified volume/raid is helpful to cram them in.

 

[GokAy]

It will still degrade performance, best to have 25% free space (either as free space or Over Provisioning) on each drive individually. Garbage collection and wear leveling is a drive feature.

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