petersmart
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I recently bought a Samsung NVME M.2 500GB on here (and very pleased with it) to add to my Z800 workstation which already has a 1TB Samsung NVME.
Both run at 1.8/1.7 GB/Sec - in other words super fast even on the PCIe2 slots available.
But it occurred to me that I could try a bit of technological magic to speed up the 1TB NVME.
And it worked - so I now have 2 NVMEs - 1x500GB and 1x1TB - which is exactly what I had before - so where does the magic come in?
Well the 1TB NVME is now twice as fast as it was before:
BEFORE
AFTER:
So how did I manage it?
Windows 7 ( and probably Win 10) allows you to create a RAID array in software which I used here - but compared to the hardware RAID there is a very important difference - you can use different size SSDs in the software RAID without losing any of the SSDs.
So I went into the Disk Manager and deleted the partions on both NVMEs (after saving all data) - this is necessary because only unallocated disks can be RAIDed.
Then I selected the 1TB disk and dragged across the 500GB as the 2 disks for the RAID array.
Then I chose to stripe them (RAID 0) and go through the usual process of formatting them - there was a warning that the disks created could not be used to boot from because they would be dynamic discs - which is why I had already set hardware RAID on my Z800 which you can boot from)
Once set up I had a 1TB disk which is created from the 500GB SSD and HALF of the 1TB disk - the other half of the 1TB disk was also available as a second disc.
So in other words I still had what I started with but the software RAID now ran at twice the speed of the original 1TB.
The second half of the 1TB SSD was not part of the striped RAID and so only ran at 1.8/1.7 GB/Sec.
This is a good way for anyone to increase the speed and size of an SSD if they need the combination - just remember that you cannot boot into the faster SSD created.
Both run at 1.8/1.7 GB/Sec - in other words super fast even on the PCIe2 slots available.
But it occurred to me that I could try a bit of technological magic to speed up the 1TB NVME.
And it worked - so I now have 2 NVMEs - 1x500GB and 1x1TB - which is exactly what I had before - so where does the magic come in?
Well the 1TB NVME is now twice as fast as it was before:
BEFORE
AFTER:
Windows 7 ( and probably Win 10) allows you to create a RAID array in software which I used here - but compared to the hardware RAID there is a very important difference - you can use different size SSDs in the software RAID without losing any of the SSDs.
So I went into the Disk Manager and deleted the partions on both NVMEs (after saving all data) - this is necessary because only unallocated disks can be RAIDed.
Then I selected the 1TB disk and dragged across the 500GB as the 2 disks for the RAID array.
Then I chose to stripe them (RAID 0) and go through the usual process of formatting them - there was a warning that the disks created could not be used to boot from because they would be dynamic discs - which is why I had already set hardware RAID on my Z800 which you can boot from)
Once set up I had a 1TB disk which is created from the 500GB SSD and HALF of the 1TB disk - the other half of the 1TB disk was also available as a second disc.
So in other words I still had what I started with but the software RAID now ran at twice the speed of the original 1TB.
The second half of the 1TB SSD was not part of the striped RAID and so only ran at 1.8/1.7 GB/Sec.
This is a good way for anyone to increase the speed and size of an SSD if they need the combination - just remember that you cannot boot into the faster SSD created.
Last edited:
