M.2 NVMe SSDs in Raid 0 array?

Hi there
no reason in theory -- note though in a RAID 0 array the whole thing is lost if one of the disks in the array becomes defective. However provided you have backup Disk failures are fortunately rare these days - at least at the home user level. So you have to judge whether the (usually massive) increase in speed for RAID 0 is worth the extra risk of having to perform data recovery from backup.

Also your machine might not be able to give you maximum I/O throughput of 2 SSD's in RAID 0 -- depends on CPU and mobo.

For Software RAID 0 in Windows define the 2 SSD's as a storage pool with no redundancy and use the total pool as a storage volume. This is effectively Software RAID but Windows doesn't call it that.

As far as hardware RAID cards are concerned - consumer grade RAID cards are usually HIDEOUS - you are better off using Software RAID (in Linux run mdadm to create and set up RAID at the level you want). Decent hardware RAID cards are quite expensive as are things like SAS too.

If you do use hardware raid on your boot device the drivers need to be loaded at boot time so if you create macrium stand alone backups you will need to ensure the RAID driver is loaded when you create the bootable media.

Also if installing Windows on the RAID device(s) you will need to ensure at Windows install time the RAID driver is loaded or Windows won't see any HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi there @24c
what's not working.

what hardware card have you got for RAID0 or are you using software -- and what if using software are you using.

RAID is usually pretty easy to set up although I think I saw somewhere that W10 won't boot on HDD's that are part of Storage Spaces.

I tend to use Linux though for holding large amounts of data - software RAID there works without any problems at all.

If the hardware card is OK with correct drivers then in theory Windows should boot provide at install time you "inject" the RAID driver. You'll need to do a clean windows install though for this to work properly (if it works at all -- Windows might detect RAID and refuse to boot -- I don't have a hardware card so I can't say).

Anyway post back - as I'd be interested in this -- I can get a decent RAID card (don't ask where !!!!!!) later to test with.

As well as defining the RAID array it will initially have to be formatted with a valid file system for windows boot. You might have to do that with a bootable usb / disk from the card manufacturer as that needs to be in place BEFORE any windows install. It's unlikely you can do it from within windows itself.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi there

How are you attempting to create the RAID array, format it with a file system and start it.

I see from the Bios that there's RAID config in it - but it still needs a file system to be formatted on it.

See what GPARTED shows when booting a stand alone partition manager -- GPARTED is downloadable anywhere (and free).

Windows won't boot RAID unless it sees a "single Disk" in the case of RAID 0 so you will need to have this array formatted and bootable .

If windows can't see the boot sectors / boot efi partition in case of efi then it won't boot.

Test it also with a Linux Live distro - you don't have to know anything about Linux just boot and see from the file manager if the HDD's (SSD's) are seen either as 2 discrete disks or a single volume -- if you get into command mode on the Linux live distro just type lsblk -- this will show if the RAID 0 array is reachable,

Cheers
jimbo