Ultimate SSD Speed: Combining FOUR SSDs into a Supersonic Storage Drive! 

SOME IMPORTANT NOTES: Some of this is in the video, but since not everyone watches the whole video... 😁 1. DO NOT use a RAID 0 stripe for storing critical data… unless you have a backup. 2. Make a backup… then make another one for good measure. 3. RAID 0 does not provide redundancy - if any one disk fails, the whole volume is going down and you lose your data. See point 2. 4. Some RAID arrays do provide redundancy, or a combination of striping AND redundancy… but, NONE of them replaces a good backup routine. See point 2. 5. A RAID 0 stripe massively improves sequential read/write performance, but does not make much (if any) difference to random drive operations - as shown in the video. Unless you are regularly managing large files like me, you may not see much benefit. 6. SSD RAID volumes often don’t support TRIM - it’s important to do your research. If you do choose to do this, consider buying at least double the capacity you actually need and be prepared to periodically format the volume/individual SSDs when it inevitably slows down. 7. Most people would not stripe their system drive as I do in this video - if you don’t understand the pitfalls, or the benefits, do something else. 8. This system is not my only computer. All my data is backed up multiple times on RAID arrays which do have redundancy, and in multiple physical locations. 9. If my striped volume dies it will cause me precisely ZERO problems, because I have arranged my workflow so that I can use multiple computers… and, see point 2. 10. NOTHING in this video should be construed as me making any recommendations on how you should organise your storage. You proceed at your own risk. 12. Did I mention that you might want to make a backup? Have fun everyone 😊

6:08 Best part of the video! 😂

Thanks for the review man! Saved me from making a mistake on getting the hyper-x for my rig, as it is, my motherboard does not support bifurcation. Although I just really wanted to have this option for expanded, fast storage. Looks like I will wait on it a while longer now haha. Thanks again!

Very interesting and well researched. I would add a few things. A motherboard may have a so-called South Bridge chip (SB - "chip set") that acts like a switch between I/O channels. Consequently, all I/O devices with their CPU connection routed via this SB compete for CPU time. Your mouse may compete with your system (boot) drive when both dangle from the SB - the default of most motherboards. The logical design diagram of the motherboard will shed light on this. A motherboard may have an NVME slot directly on the PCIe lanes of the CPU, but using it may render a PCIe slot inoperable and you may not be able to boot from the NVME slot. The RAID array on the PCIe card in the video bypasses the SB and has direct links to the CPU - this should make the latency associated with each I/O (as in IOPS) lower and hence improve throughput for random I/O or transaction-based I/Os. As my motherboard has an Intel Rapid Storage (IRST) RAID controller, I suspect in this case, the RAID is in part in a driver, in part in HW and the performance difference between such a HW RAID and a Windoes RAID is not very relevant. As, like spinning platter disk drives, SSD have an I/O controller that runs firmware and uses cache, top speed in a RAID 0 array depends on cache size of member drives and number of members. Concurrent writes to member drives aside, as are happening here with RAID members having their own CPU-I/O channels. Or, the cache & #members thing becomes relevant if the members share I/O line(s). Personally, I have a RAID 0 array like this one here that I use for write bottlenecked I/Os. This includes cache files for Photoshop and Lightroom, their catalogues, etc. It can also host Windoes' page file that does not need to be on the C: drive actually (except you may no longer get a .DMP (dump) file when Windoes crashes). And I have my OS and apps on a RAID 1 array. These volumes see only few writes, especially if the page file is elsewhere. You could make a partition in the RAID 0 array that you mount on C:\Program Data and in that way hopefully speed up some apps a bit that use writes to drive instead of global variables (meh), or (fine) store config data in there. The OS on RAID 1 facilitates concurrent writes to different data blocks and this reduces application load times, but also makes paging faster of binary (app, OS) data. All memory is completely written into a page file, except for binary data that only has its pointers/addresses in memory when associated memory pages are paged out (better, overwritten in this case). And, as SSD life expectancy depends on the quality of its memory cells, as the quality is expressed in TBW (total bytes written), and as essentially TBW/DriveCapacity gives you how many program/erase (P/E) cycles render your SSD's memory cells inoperable, you may have bought SSD with 600 P/E cycles life expectancy. Completely rewrite these drives every day and they'll die before the second year is over. So I stage data that is on my workstation only temporarily on an array of rotating platter drives. In concluding, aside, ask a team of electrical engineers and quantum physicists how long they thing data in off-power solid state will remain reasonably consistent. The answer may be "between 7 and 7,000 hours". Or, if consistency of your data over time is important, then make sure to use something like RAID 5 with a HW or SW controller that does data scrubbing on a, say, daily basis. RAID 0 and RAID 1 have zero data consistency guarantee.

Great info... thanks!

Thanks for informative video - especially using 2 M2's of say mid Capacity 2 TB as a Raid stripe drive to obtain improved read / write speeds

This past weekend (before seeing this video) I bought one of these cards. My plan was to make a 2TB raid 10 drive with 4 Gen 3 1TB M.2 drives.I have a Gigabyte x570 Aorus Master MB. When I plugged it in the second slot, i only saw one drive (like you mentioned). When I bifurcated the slot, I saw two, not four. Now I don't know if it's my board or all x570s, but the second slot is only a x8 slot, so it can only see two of the cards. I ended up returning it and getting a single 2TB card for the system. Oh well... it was a learning experience. Thanks for the video.

great overview!!!!!!! thanks!! man, they don't make computers easy. there were so many caveats to keep in mind!!!

I don't have a desktop PC that can take advantage of your setup but I still enjoyed learning about it. Thanks.

Finally someone do a video on ssd raid. Well done 🎉🎉

great video! i was wondering if bifurcation is an issue with an ITX board? i wanna do a APU build and wanna leave the pcie slot open for this NvMe riser card, wouldnt that be ok to do?

Thanks for the mention! As I recall the aim was to guess the actual not the theoretical! 😉

Q: You said you already have 2 SSDs installed on the motherboard. Which prevents you from raiding the ASUS card. Why is that? Because it then tries to RAID your existing SSDs is it? I thought you would have been able to specifiy which drives weren't part of the RAID array in BIOS settings and exclude those in the settings. Or create a separate raid for those two system drives.😕I am thinking of getting the Gen5 version of this card for additional fast storage. It's handy to know that windows raid is slower than expected.

3:24 Wouldn't the first caveat to using one of these add in cards be that you need a spare 16x pci-e slot that is not sharing lanes with another slot?

Just after the day, I did 2x Samsung 980 PRO 1TB as RAID0 on my gaming rig and hit 14GiG/Sec Read speed. Thank you sir!

Yeah, interesting, wonderful playground. I love to play around with such ideas also. Gonna test this setup under linux with diverse filesystems (zfs, btrfs) and raid levels🤣

I'm thinking of getting the Gen 5 version in my Asus ProArt Z790 Creator Wifi mboard. I'm not sure if it's compatible in the second PCIe slot, though, as it says that 1(x8)/x0 is bifurcation. The first slot is 1(x8)/1(x16) so will it take x8 from there? 🤔

I remember doing something a little similar with an older Mac mini Pro - which supported 2 drives. I put SSDs in both and then back with MacOS supported, set them as RAID 0, damn that was fast given most disks were still platters...

What I’ve seen with the latest M2 SSDs, they can get very hot when they are in heavy use. So if you use a very small enclosure without proper cooling this can even cause the SSD to be completely unresponsive even after a very short time.

I have laptop running gen wb 850 5700 read write speeds, there was gen 3 3200 read write about from factory, double drive sizes also 2tt

How are you mounting the system raiding drive? Is this on another AIC or are you spread across two motherboard nvme slots?

Is good 4 m.2 pci in raid 0 boot Or just 1 boot and 3 storage In asus oci adapter x16 ? I need more power speed For rendering Thanks for info

You can increase your drive speeds further by caching your available RAM against it using Primocache (or something similar to).

Aaah, stripes was the vocabulary I was looking for. 😂😂 🙌

are you using a am4 or am5 motherboard setup for this? I have a x570 motherboard and a r7 3800x. My Gpu is a rtx 4090 so im looking to upgrade the rest of my setup to AM5. However im not sure if there are any motherboards available either expensive or cheap that can bifuricate it to support both a 4090 and 4 m.2 nvme drives on the asus card. Any recommendations?

Why not use software raid? Spin up a Linux VM pass the drives as virt-SCSI throw them into a ZFS pool and ISCSI them back to the host? Then have the host overlay the NTFS onto the ZFS block storage. You get RAID, and READ caching if you increase the VM's available memory.

New Gen5 asus card is already available. Worth to rty.

Awesome to know knowledgebase

there are some cards from Highpoint that might interest you

Just a question: why no test with Win 10 storage spaces? I thought the raid setup for windows was kind of obsolete.

It would be interesting to see how it performs with software RAID in Linux.

Why didn't we get full gen 4 bus speeds on the drives attached to the Asus controller?

Let Windows manage your striped SSDs?? How is that working out with the typical ubuntu / Win10 dual boot system?? I guess a hardware RAID controller is required, right??

I'm currently looking for some Time Machine backup solution... Now using USB3 traditional spinning HDD... and it drives me crazy how slow it is... and with my data i don't need anything big... so this might be a good tip with for me with some enclosure... still would probably go with USB3, as thunderbolt enclosures still seem pretty expensive to me

What about THUNDERBOLT? If I wanted to build an array for a Mac Mini using these Samsungs?

Which should I get for the my M1 pro?

To this day, I still haven't seen 4 Samsung 990 Pros, or 980 Pros for that matter, thrown in RAID0 with PCIe 4 speeds, this needs to happen.

hi I'm from Brazil, I bought (hyper m.2 x16 gen 4 card) and, my motherboard is an Asus B85M-E/BR motherboard for Intel LGA-1150 VGA DVI HDMI (2015) It is compatible? Is it possible to use with 2 or more nvme m.2 ssd hds?

Could you do some loading time tests for current games? Would be interesting to see if a raid can speed those up significantly or not.

You should change the OS. I've tested my 8 2T 990Pro with Linux md raid and simply got 8 times the speed. And fortunately my machine runs them all as PCIe 4. But that was only testing for fun. I'm actually running those 8 drives with zfs in a pool of stripes of 4 pairs of mirrors. Because for me it is more about fault tolerance and all the file system features and not about speed. But if you only want speed - get a PCIe 4.0 adapter and run it with Linux md raid. That will pretty much max it out.

System drive on raid made a significant gain in performance compared to a single nvme drive? I Don't believe it. How was it measured?

I have that same card the Hyper M.2 and it runs in my server motherboard with all SSD's at PCIe 4.0 speed. I am not using any RAID function of my motherboard or CPU, just all 4 SSD's presented like normal to my operating system. I suspect your issue is your motherboard setting the speed lower for some reason with this card. (I'm using it with a Gen 3 EPYC Supermicro board). EDIT: I see in your video you left the slot speed on "Auto", change it to 4.0 mode and see if it works.

Just so it is not clear, you cannot use this Asus Hyper M.2 adapter to add 4 extra logical drives to your system. It all depends on the amount of PCI Lanes your motherboard supports. You will end up wasting your money and time if you don't do your research. 😥

How should you set up a card like this when using macOS (whether in a h@ckintosh or a real Mac Pro)?

Imagine using that as Photoshop scratch disk.

In raid 0 random 4KB (RND4K) isn't double?

you don't need windows or the controller card though

Your CPU is most likely the issue of you losing performance in WIndows software rRAID. Yes there are better option that give better results, but the main issue for losing roughly 1/3 of the performance is not the number of cores, but the performance of each core/thread. Try the same setup but with highend desktop AMD or Intel Chip and you should see better results.

Message 2 I have 2 slot m.2 intern in motherboard

I was slower than an SSD running on a gen 3 setting and only made it the 2nd like! 😀

Be careful. Sometimes using built in raid on motherboard doesn’t allow TRIM

I'm all for RAID 10 in a professional workflow. I don't have the resources or need for that, so I have no experience... my computer is just for entertainment.

By the way, not advisable for important data. Backup VERY regularly, even when ssds are very reliable.

Why didnt you return the card and get the right one?

Does TRIM work on a striped Raid? I think it is Windows that controls TRIM and Windows cannot see the 4 individual drives.

Windows being slower than MOBO drivers is not an artifact of poor software. Its an artifact of where in the software stack the payload is being segmented and reassembled. At the BIOS level it is pointer manipulation, at the Windows driver level its there are additional transfers to move blocks down the the hardware level for DMA block writes. If you were to look at BIOS RAID for Marvell or Intel chipsets they have custom drivers for Windows to massage this dataflow. It will be interesting with CXL coming down the pipe. All this manipulation stands in the way of raw superblock transfers.

You compared sequential reads/writes and ignored randoms, which are almost the same, and more important to overall performance.

I’m giving this a like, but if I’m honest I didn’t understand half of it 🤣

If your goal is pure speed to offload then I would probably pair a couple M.2 PCIe 5.0 drives. But then if you actually value that data, have that information moved to a RAID 1 or simply have a RAID 10 array for editing. Then once you're done with a project, move it to a local NAS that has M.2 caching or scratch drives along with high capacity NAS HDDs for archiving. Your current configuration is extremely volatile and any of that information can disappear forever in a snap of a finger. The more drives you have in your RAID 0 configuration are exponentially more volatile. Personally, there's zero chance that I would ever RAID 0 my working data or my OS and apps. Instead in my rig I have a 4TB RAID 1 M.2 array with a single M.2 with my OS and Apps that has a daily 1:1 bootable clone matching M.2. Your boot drive, OS and applications all work on 4K random speeds. There's very little benefit in speed of putting them in RAID 0 configuration.

Who the hell is actually needing such data rates in everyday use? Your actual performance is the slowest/weakest link in the data chain.

Current capacity 2.5 drives will be ewaste, I hope somebody comes out with a NAS unit that's designed to hold a stupid amount of 2.5 drives and deploy them top down like a toaster that you stick bread in when you're making breakfast. Icydock has these triple 5.25 bay modules that convert optical drive slots into twenty-four 2.5 drive arrays each per module, it would be cool if somebody took 4 of those devices for twelve 5.25 total slots to make a NAS that would contain upwards of 96 drives, 96 drives that would have otherwise gone to e-waste dumps as the laptop manufactures all switch to m.2 drives. 96 drives * 8tb is 768 tb of storage. It's a lot of storage I would like to think that mother nature would appreciate you from saving 96 drives from rotting in dumps to leach nasty chemicals. Right 500gb and 1tb drives are rotting on shelves., what's to say the market would look like for 8tb drives in 5-10 years from now?

Try only 3 drives

WOW you really really should NOT STRIPE your boot drive. Mirror the drive! You lose 50% capacity but you gain redundancy without losing any read performance. Since all data would exist on both drive it can read half from one drive and half from the other. Write performance would be half of a stripe array but with an OS drive read is far more important.

Всем привет!

I bought one of those ASUS cards and was a total WOFTAM. Only supported under ASUS boards (yuk) and refused to work under native PCIE Bifuricated systems. Threw it in the bin after smashing it with a sledge-hammer.

For an OS, your talking primarily small file sizes and therein lies a massive problem for anyone buying even the latest gen 5 NVME's. While headline/marketing read speeds have jumped over the years (as a direct by-product of each new PCIe iteration), the OS-crucial 4k read/write speeds have shockingly stagnated at snail speed (in comparison) for a long, long, long time, unfortunately. Even if you were to use the drive as a data drive for large files, we then immediately come across the second major issue/gotcha - the 'Achilles write hole problem'. You don't have to write that many GB for your drive to suddenly crawl - many dropping to speeds waaay below a fast HDD. Sad, but unfortunately true.

Samsung, the maker of selfdestruting SSDs

NVMe 4.0 x4 maxes out at 7450 Mbps - 6900 mbps - That is the speed limit, REGARDLESS HOW MANY DRIVES YOU HAVE ON RAID 0 - The speed tests make it seem like you can run these cards and you multiply the speed at which you run, say 2 Samsung 990 Pros @ 7450 x2 = 14500 mbps, WRONG! i'm telling you - these companies DO NOT! ESPECIALLY SAMSUNG! DO NOT WANT TO CONTINUE CREATING NEW CARDS FOR A MARKET THAT WON'T BUY THEM, but the fastest speed those cards can handle is 7450 mbps. Raid 0 testing that makes you believe your doubling your speed is COMPLETE FABRICATION! - the only way to achieve faster speeds on your boot drive is to go PCIe 5.0 @ 12500 Mbps, Reality is Speed limits are Speed Limits, the speed tests suggest you can beat that with 2 of the same drives in Raid 0 (While great idea, YOUR STILL MAXING OUT YOUR SPEED AT 7450 Mbps) it's about samsung refusing to build these chips yet, they don't think the market needs them, i just spend hour RANTING ABOUT PCIe 5.0 and the true cord that allows 600-watt Speed, No not 2 6+2 pins, fuckin idiots, that's not what i'm talking about, as the true speed of PCIe 5.0 will require 4 8-pin 150 watt Or 4 6+2 pin 150 watt (since 150 watts is the max you can get in those Pins on your power supply) HOWEVER - the 7900 xtx runs 3 8-pin 150 watt slots, giving you access to 450 watts of power, making it a PCIe 4.5 (almost 5.0 but not quite) where as the True 5.0 cards have a new cord altogether, designated within the New power supplies, which ppl may suspect is dubious, yet is giving you 600 watts of power - they're called 600W PCIE 5.0 16Pin (12+4) High Current Power Cable (12VHPWR PSU Cable) now some ppl are dubious about this cable giving you 600 watts of true power, cuz the pin count doesn't match up to the 4 8-pins it would require to give you the actual amount of power it would require to run a PCIe 5.0 Card, but in my opinion that is the PCIe 5.0 dedicated cable, 600 watts, not fully needed unless you get 3090 TI or above, even the RX 7900 XTX has 3 8-pin or 3 6+2pin Connectors, which is still 450 and the most powerful card AMD has ever put out, yet their dubious on how to equip that, i'd rather put 3 8-pins into it and run it that way, as opposed to the using the wire they give you to connect the 12VHPWR PSU Cable to 3 6 +2 (Empty pins) cables - seems scammish, they're 8-pin cables are missing 2 pins in each of them, so rather run 3 8-pin cables for a total of 450 watts, or even 4 8 pin cables for a total of 600 watts, either way PCIe 5.0 is 600 watts of dedicated GPU power, My point being you need more power to run PCIe 5.0 and doubling up your 990 Pro in Raid 0 WON'T ALLOW YOU TO BEAT THE SPEED LIMIT! EINSTEIN TELL THESE PUNKS THEY'RE BEING PLAYED! light speed is light speed, can't be cheated.

gross dude's avatar at whatever time.

Those NVMe's are PCIe 4.0 so a computer with less than that will be a choke point. If you don't have a hardware raid card you are wasting your money. Are they freebees perhaps? Is this an ad?

Re-install windows to switch between ACHI and Raid mode? Im sad bro, can’t be a reviewer and tell lies. “Set windows to boot in SAFE mode and reboot to safe mode. Once booted in safe mode, shut down and switch to Raid or vice versa, switch to ACHI, reboot in safe mode, windows will automatically reconfigure for either or, set back to normal mode boot and reboot, done… 5mins, not a FULL re-install’

Having 4 SSDs doesnt really give you that much better performance. 1 ssd yes but 4 doesnt really add that much. Nice try though.

Sorry, but nonsense test, as max sequential speed is not a typical workload… look at the random I/O numbers -> no change-> not faster in typical home user workloads

First

Technically raid0 is not raid Also, never, I repeat never use a raid controller with flash!

That is not how electronics works. Electronics are only as good as their weakest link. That is like thinking about getting four Viper engines and mounting one to each wheel, thinking you are going to go really fast. Dumb thinking, funny and entertaining to think about but dumb never the less.