RAID 0 with 4x, 3x or 2x WD Red?

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hello,

I’m building a new computer and I use an SSD to load the operating system and another volume with WD Red drives on RAID 0 Red for files.

I’ll use a backup solution in a 4TB external HD, so I’m choosing the RAID 0 for more performance. Note: My motherboard supports up to 4 HDDs in SATA III 6 Gbps (Asus Rampage IV Extreme).

My question is whether it is worth doing RAID 0 with 4 HDDs WD Red, or if the gain with 4 HDDs is very small in relation to use RAID 0 with 3 or 2 HDDs. Whit 4 WD Red on RAID 0 can I get close to the transfer rate of the SSDs that are around 400 MB/s?

Has anyone done tests with 2, 3 and 4 HDDs on RAID 0?

Thank you!

2

Hello,

As a recommendation, if you will be using the drives as backup solution, will be better if you set the drives as RAID 1 or RAID 5  for data protection.

Please note that the transfer speed will depent on the enviroment that the drives are connected.

3

Obviously, the more drives you use in a raid 0 array, the more storage space you will have. From my experiance speed will not increase exponentially as you add more and more drives. It seems that 3 or maybe 4 drives is the “sweet” spot.