RAID Question

So as you can see in my signature, I ordered:

2x 2TB Samsung 960 PRO NVMe m.2 SSDs that I am going to put in RAID 0 for the OS / Games / Programs

Then I have the 3rd m.2 SSD but it's not an NVMe so it's the 1TB 950 EVO m.2 SSD so that can't be RAIDed with the first two NVMe SSDs otherwise the performance would drop to the slowest SSD in the array which in this case, would be the 1TB 850 EVO m.2 SSD

Now my question is, can I RAID that m.2 non NVMe 1TB 850 EVO SSD with the 2.5" SATA 4TB 850 EVO SSD? performance isn't gonna matter there since they should be the same as the 1TB 850 EVO isn't NVMe, can I RAID them in RAID 0 mode to get a total of a single 5TB partition rather than having to split them?

I asked someone and he said you can't do this since the sizes are different as in, one is 1TB and the other is 4TB but I was under the impression that in RAID 0, you can

what do you think? can this actually be done?

@tilleroftheearth @Cloudfire @Porter

 

@Diversion did just this recently in the MSI 16L13 based Eurocom F5, RAID'd in the 2.5" drive, so it can be done.

I've done it on the Asus G750JH for a 2x M.2 + 1x 2.5" SATA, and it was great

The BIOS would need to support it, so all you can do is try it out

 

If I understand what you are asking, yes you can RAID 0 them(if it allows you to as @hmscott said), but you will end up with a 2TB drive. The array will consist of the 1TB drive and only 1TB of the larger one.

The best thing you could do leave them individual in BIOS, get them formatted how you want them in Windows (I overprovision an addition 10% over whatever may be built in, some say more, some don’t do it at all). Then use create a spanned drive in the windows drive management area where you did your partitioning from.

It is not RAID, and you don’t get any performance improvement, but it does combine the drives to look like one large 5TB drive. The only downside I can think of (which is the same as RAID 0) is that if one drive fails I am almost certain you lose them both.

Also there is a thing called “storage spaces”, which to me is really only useful if you want to RAID 0 or 1 but no way to do it from the BIOS. This is Windows own pseudo RAID setup, which does not help in your situation.

Neither spanning or storage spaces can be used on an OS drive. if you want to minimize drives including the OS one, then RAID 0 is the best option I have found. You can also use symbolic links to get things installed to other drives without the program knowing you did it, but the downside is the management of the drive is more of a pain (IMHO).

 

ohhh yes that reminds me! Ill just them up as a single spanned drive, problem solved, all they will be used for is storage of videos

thank you