# SSD/NVMe RAID 0 for orchestral libraries in 2020?



## ChoPraTs (Dec 2, 2020)

Hello everyone!

Anyone here is using a Raid 0 volume with SSD drives to save/load libraries?

I would like to know if there are news related to this topic or tests comparing SSD RAID configurations with independent SSD drives performances.
I recently purchased 4 NVMe SSDs for my iMac that are in an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure (Netstor NA622TB3). My idea would be to use all 4 disks to create a single RAID 0 volume for my orchestral libraries (Spitfire, East West, Vienna, Kontakt).

I know that configuring a RAID 0 with the 4 NVMe disks would improve reading speed, especially when loading large DAW projects (I’m using Logic Pro X) with many instrumental tracks (sometimes more than 400). But I do not know if it could cause any problem when reproducing the project, since the Raid would be created by software (macOS) and I do not know if that could significantly consume processor resources when reading/playing a large amount of samples. I’m not worried about security or drive failures, since I have another mechanical big hard drive that I use as a backup of all my libraries.

I’ve read in many forums that users don’t recommend Raid configurations with SSD drives for music production/libraries. They argue that it is not necessary to create a RAID volume with SSD drives, since SSDs are very fast in themselves (in fact, NVMe are even faster). It’s also known that the access speed to the disk is more important than the reading rate for our musical purposes. But I don't know if this is still the case or something has changed in the recent years.

Curiously, all NVMe external Thunderbolt enclosures that I have seen are designed precisely to configure Raid systems. One of the purposes because I would like to have all the libraries in the same RAID volume, beyond the performance, is because it allows me to have everything in a single volume and it’s more easy to configure all the software and also for easier cloning the drive for backup.

On the other hand, if the most advisable thing is to have the 4 NVMe drives independently, even losing approximately 50% of the reading speed, the backup system should also change and I could not simply clone a single volume.

So, is there any news about this? Anyone is using SSD Raid 0 configurations with big orchestral templates? And in this case, what stripe/cluster size should be the best for samples (16, 32, 64, 128 or 256 KB)?

Thanks a lot.


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## chimuelo (Dec 3, 2020)

I’ve tried this over the years and RAID 0 dangers outweigh the risk of negligible benefits. Maybe load quicker on a lucky scenario.

I started with RAID 5 using Supermicro hardware, speed was undetectable and redundancy was surprisingly bad as audio dropped out during rebuilds.

Tried again using NetCell hardware and RAID 6 and this was the same except simulated crashes allowed uninterrupted rebuilds.

But the RAID 6 was so good at large chunks of data being streamed we turned it into a video archiving/gaming machine where RAID Level 6 is scary fast.

Microsemi 8 Port or a newer Highpoint NVMe hardware accelerator if you just have to use RAID. 

To me it’s like adding more pipes to my sink that already works fine.


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## rnb_2 (Dec 3, 2020)

The biggest reason to go RAID with NVMe is capacity at a lower price point - when I put together my 2TB RAID0 setup a couple years ago, 500GB NVMe were the pricing sweet spot, and I needed 2TB for my photo/video work. Prices have come down over time, of course, so now 2TB NVMe drives aren't that expensive, so RAID is only really worth it if you need more than 2TB from a single volume.

From a speed perspective, individual NVMe drives are so fast now that you won't see much improvement except in VERY ideal circumstances, because Thunderbolt can only allocate ~2800MB/s to drives on a channel (to leave headroom for possible video use). On a 4-bay RAID, that means that (typically - I think there might be some enclosures which work differently) each SSD can only provide 700MB/s, much lower than a single NVMe drive in a Thunderbolt or USB-C enclosure. To go higher than 2800MB/s, you'd need to RAID multiple Thunderbolt drives on separate Thunderbolt busses, and you're unlikely to notice the benefit over just running a single fast NVMe drive by itself.

I wouldn't generally shy away from RAID0 for complexity or fragility - as long as you have a good backup, it's historically been worth it for tasks that needed more speed than a single drive could provide. That probably held through the age of SATA III SSDs, where you could only get to 2000MB/s by running a 4-drive RAID0 setup. With NVMe, a single drive can now hit those speeds.


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