Solved RAID Suggestion

Hi all Eleven forum users, first of all I have to say that the forum is one of the sites I daily visit to get news and any information to have my system (Win 22H2 OS Build 22621.1928) running updated and smooth, as anyone can see mine is a dated (12 years) I have googled a lot and found that installing an NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD using a PCIe adapter doesn't give me any improvement due to the PCIe generation of my motherboard (2.0) and also it seems i could hardly see it in my system because of BIOS capabilities if the NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD is not formatted and i cannot format it as i do not have any system to use for that purpose; thatis why I am thinking to install a second SATA 3 SSD for a RAID 0 configuration. What I am asking to anyone would like to help me is: would a RAID array could be the right way to improve speed in my workflow? no gaming at all Mostly used for photo retouching software and some video slideshows.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Gas

Unless you really like a challenge and love to tweak computers with all the stress that can involve I would seriously consider a new computer rather than trying to improve a 12-year old machine. Although you don't do gaming photo retouching and video work can be a demanding ask for old Motherboard and Memory speed limitations. Just a thought for you to think about. Good luck. Hope someone can help you.

Gas said:

thatis why I am thinking to install a second SATA 3 SSD for a RAID 0 configuration. What I am asking to anyone would like to help me is: would a RAID array could be the right way to improve speed in my workflow? no gaming at all Mostly used for photo retouching software and some video slideshows.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Gas

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What sort of performance problems are you seeing would be my question. I'm skeptical that more hard drive read/write throughput is going to make a noticeable change. The biggest advantage of an SSD really is the ultra low random access times. That doesn't change going to RAID, or going to NVMe, etc.

Even though I do play some games, and I have a super fast PCI Gen 4 NVMe, I keep my games on a standard Sata SSD as the performance difference is next to nothing. Keeping my VM's on my NVMe provides way more bang for the buck for me.

Thank you very much Wiganken and Pparks for your interest on my question and for your explanation. I'll just give you some clarifications on my current system which I'm quite satisfied, I process RAW images of over 80 MB with the latest versions of photoshop and Lightroom without major problems; since I planned the purchase of a new PC for next year, I thought that the use of SSDs in RAID could bring me some improvements until the assembly of the new PC. But from what you tell me there would be no practical improvement and you have given a clear answer to my question. Thank you for the support.

Array will not help in any way. Your bottleneck is the motherboard itself. Doing an array is like simply adding an M.2 SSD. No matter how fast your drive is, it will only perform as much as your motherboard can deliver.

A RAID 0 configuration will increase performance since you're adding the ability to write to two disks in parallel. The average gain though is only going to be between 4-9%. You also increase the risk of data loss since losing either disk will cause the system to fail.

neemobeer said:

A RAID 0 configuration will increase performance since you're adding the ability to write to two disks in parallel. The average gain though is only going to be between 4-9%. You also increase the risk of data loss since losing either disk will cause the system to fail.

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In theory, that is correct. But again, even if you put the fastest disk on an outdated mobo, it will only be as good as the mobo can get. The mobo still processes what the disks will write.
But of course, adding an SSD alone will help compared to a spin dtive.

If you've already gone to an SSD, you have reached the point of diminishing returns.

I ran a software (aka fake) RAID 10 setup a few years ago. I found it to be awkward. Every system crash required a re-verification of the array. That took hours. The PC was still usable during that, but HD performance was crippled while the re-verification was running.

I admit that crashes are pretty rare for me these days.

I hope that you can manage a real upgrade soon. The RTX 3060 and the Eizo monitor suggest that you're serious about photo/video work. A mid-range CPU, like an I5-13600K, would be much more powerful than an I7-2600.