Install OS on 1 850 Pro or setup as Raid 0 + Question on Raid 1 backup

My question is on my next PC setup.
Q1] Install Windows 10 on Raid 0 or separate
Q2] Best way to have my data drives run as a Raid 1 Backup or is there a better option

I currently have my system built as:

1. - Windows 10 Drive = 2 850 Pro 2tb in Raid 0 = 4TB (however, I recently learned its not installed as UEFI / GPT due to a BCD error I have)
- Windows 7 Drive = 1 850 Pro 2TB AHCI
- 3 WD Red 4TB as Data
- 1 Seagate Barracuda 3TB as Data

Ideally I would like to:
1. Have windows 10 on the fastest possible Drive. This would be the 850 pro, should I stay with windows on the Raid 0 850 Pro? I thought I would see a significant performance, however I learned it was not setup properly
2. I just purchased 2 10TB Seagate Iron Wolf Drives and would like to guarantee that my data is backed up due to a recent Smart failure. Can I run two raid arrays? What is the best way to keep the data safe?

Any other input would be greatly appreciated.

You could always do a small NVMe for windows. Then RAID0 the SSDs as a D drive to keep your fast read/write operations off of the OS drive.

I wouldn't use RAID1 as a backup method if it's your only copy. Keep the 2nd disk separate, preferably offline when not in use. This will save you from being stuck with accidentally deleted files, corrupt files, virus issues, etc.

rive22 said:

You could always do a small NVMe for windows. Then RAID0 the SSDs as a D drive to keep your fast read/write operations off of the OS drive.

I wouldn't use RAID1 as a backup method if it's your only copy. Keep the 2nd disk separate, preferably offline when not in use. This will save you from being stuck with accidentally deleted files, corrupt files, virus issues, etc.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Well I have 3 850 pro 2TB, does it make a difference as to which one is the OS drive? I don't own an NVME drive, but I could return one of the 10 Tb and buy one. I have been the type of person who always goes and buys the highest amount of storage I can for that point in time; hence the 3 2TB 850 pro.

I agree with you on the raid1. What is the best way of backing up the drive? Just setup a windows backup drive? Or just manually back it up to the other 10TB once in awhile?

Basically my setup is going to have these drives:

3 Samsung 850 Pro 2TB = 6TB
2 Seagate Ironwolf 10TB = 20TB
1 Seagate 3TB (may just have as a side drive

3 WD Red 4TB drives which I was considering just putting important data on and then storing those files.

Thank you for your input!

Na, no difference at all between your 850 2TB drives. Noway, keep your 10TB drives.

rive22 said:

Na, no difference at all between your 850 2TB drives. Noway, keep your 10TB drives.

Click to expand...

Sorry meant more if I raid 0 the ssd

OK, so, firstly - let's all repeat the storage mantra - RAID is not a form of backup.

Now that we've taken care of that, if you want to perform backups of your main volumes, yes, I would recommend some kind of third party software. Veeam has a free product that works well.

You have a lot of space. Three 2TB SSDs in RAID 0 yields your 6TB of space. It'll be faster than a single 2TB SSD, but probably not noticably so for most workloads. As for why, I'm going to copy/paste myself from an older thread rather than re-explain:

***
In my opinion, we're in the realm of diminishing returns for a while when it comes to SSD speed. The largest part of what made SSDs feel so much faster than mechanical drives had nothing to do with their transfer speed going dramatically up, but had to do with their access times going magnificently dramatically down. There's not really much more room to gain on the access times front, so everyone is scrambling to have the highest transfer speeds possible, but the user impact of that is significantly less.

At some point it comes down to the performance of the rest of the system as well; even if your SSD had unlimited speed, the rest of your system can't consume the data at unlimited speed.

It reminds me of the evolution of TV a little bit. Moving from VHS to DVD was revolutionary; sound got amazingly better, we got things like extra content and no rewinding, and the picture quality improvement was huge. When Blu-Ray came around and everything went to 1080p, there was still some room for an upgrade- people had bigger TVs now so the HD quality was appreciated. But it wasn't as big- people already had good sound, and the extra content and no rewinding was old hat. Now there's 4K, and for a *lot* of people, well, who gives a shit. It's just picture quality, and 1080p is already pretty nice for a normal size TV at standard viewing distances. SSDs feel the same; at first the upgrades were revolutionary, but now they're just evolutionary and all kind of blur together.
***

In general, you'd be performing the RAID 0 for the simplicity of a larger combined drive, not the speed. I run 2x 1TB 850 in RAID 0 for exclusively the capacity, not the speed.

Your 10 TB drives, you could run in RAID 1 if you like, and use Veeam to back up your SSD drives (presumably drive C) to your mechanical drives (presumably drive D). If the contents of your C drive is important enough, you could take things a step further and place the 10TB drives in some kind of separate NAS type enclosure and in a different part of your home/apartment to take the backups further away physically from the main computer to help protect against electrical surges, water leaks, fires, whatever. You could also sign up for an inexpensive offsite internet backup product like Backblaze or Mozy or something and send your important shit over the internet, if it's important.

This is all presuming your actual data fits into the SSDs. If you have more than 6TB of data, you'd obviously have to adjust.

Usually one knows when they have a use for RAID0. Otherwise for a normal rig there generally isn't a noticeable performance difference with having 1 SSD on the OS vs RAID0. When you start doing any kind of tasks that involve large file manipulation though then a RAID0 volume is a tremendous benefit. Even then though in that case I still prefer the OS on it's own dedicated volume and a separate fast RAID0 volume as a workload drive.

What kind of stuff do you do with your rig mostly?

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys.

I am using the drive for person file backups (4TB), movies (8TB), backup of pictures(2TB) and games (2TB).

In my case I rar / unrar a lot of files and have been using those on the SSD's in the meantime since its so much faster. However, I like to move them to my Western Digital 4tb or now 10TB hard drives for longer term storage.

One of the reasons I was considering Raid 1 was so that I did not have to worry about my personal files disappearing if my system crashed again. I was using Raid 0 originally since I liked having just 1 drive with all of the space vs having to pick and choose where to install everything. Going forward I guess I could just change the location for each since from the comments here there is not much of a difference in speed for what I am doing. I thought there was but I guess I was wrong.

dpoverlord said:

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys.

I am using the drive for person file backups (4TB), movies (8TB), backup of pictures(2TB) and games (2TB).

In my case I rar / unrar a lot of files and have been using those on the SSD's in the meantime since its so much faster. However, I like to move them to my Western Digital 4tb or now 10TB hard drives for longer term storage.

One of the reasons I was considering Raid 1 was so that I did not have to worry about my personal files disappearing if my system crashed again. I was using Raid 0 originally since I liked having just 1 drive with all of the space vs having to pick and choose where to install everything. Going forward I guess I could just change the location for each since from the comments here there is not much of a difference in speed for what I am doing. I thought there was but I guess I was wrong.

Click to expand...

Emphasizing what others have said: RAID is not a backup.

I'd put the OS on a separate SSD. 250 to 500 GB NVMe if you can do it, just to keep your large SSDs available for other stuff. Otherwise, just use one of those 2TB drives for the OS and whatever else you want the OS to use a lot of.

For backup, there are some good suggestions. I use Macrium. There's a free version available. (I dedicate one spare drive as the OS backup and another spare drive as the data disk backup. Plus, I make occasional external drive backups of both.)