What to choose for a home PC - two HDDs of 3 TB each (in raid 0) or one 6 TB?

Question

Iron

I ask for the help of experts) In general, the home PC config is as follows:
i7-8700K
ASRock Fatal1ty Z370 Professional Gaming i7
32Gb RAM, video card GTX 1080TI, SSD for the Samsung 840 system.
I would like to understand what would be better for a home PC today - two HDDs of 3 TB in raid 0 or one for 6 TB?
For tasks, I use the computer as a universal tool, periodically I play toys (Steam takes 1-2 TB), I run various virtual machines for tests and work, I store family photo and video archives and other information that has accumulated over 15 years).
For BACKUPS, movies, TV shows, torrents, DLNA, I plan to raise a mini server in the near future and place it in a shield with a router.
PS I tried to google, but basically it all boils down to the fact that all articles on this topic from 2003-2009 write that they are homemade. on boards without a hardware raid for several thousand dollars, it makes no sense to use a raid at all, they say the speed of writing / reading small files will be even worse. I would like to hear other points of view, will there be a performance gain, say in games and everyday tasks, if the system is on an SSD, and all other files are on raid 0?

Answer 1

Thanks everyone for the replies. I'll try to structure the information in one message. Since the discussion went beyond just the question of one disk of 6 or two of 3 TB, I will write general conclusions from what I have read.
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So, for a home PC with modern realities, the best solution would be to have a good SSD for the system, then one productive hard drive for toys and other rubbish (at your discretion, but the general recommendation is 7,200 rpm and 256 MB cache), for storage voluminous important data (family photo, video archive, backup copies, other important data) it is better to use a separate device - NAS, either homemade or purchased, depending on the budget, desire, and abilities.
Raid0 (software or hardware) does not make sense to use for a home PC, because. there is a very high probability of losing data, and in everyday tasks it will not give a special performance boost.

Answer 2

Well, yes, for a family archive, only a zero raid, it's easier to go straight to the trash.
You want an SSD for the system, why do you need raid 0 for everything else? Yes, and I would not do raid 1, right now that your raid will fly, more than a chance that your hard drive will fly.

Answer 3

Two screws in Raid0 are faster than one, but less reliable.

Answer 4

I keep a family photo and video archive and other information accumulated over 15 years

If there is no backup server, then definitely take two disks and put them in mirror mode. It is cheaper to buy one drive now than to carry it in for repair later with the hope of recovering important data.
When comparing a raid and a regular disk, the difference will not be noticeable by eye. The best option for the home is the system, games, software on the SSD, everything else on the HDD. In general, they write correctly - raid is not really needed at home. The servers use advanced raid controllers with special enterprise disks and all this is designed to work with each other 24/7. In home PCs, raid controllers are usually very simple.

Answer 5

in home mat. boards without a hardware raid for several thousand dollars, it makes no sense to use a raid at all

in any motherboard without a hardware raid costing - attention - 7000 rubles (adaptec 5405 for 4 disks) it makes no sense to use a raid. It's just that in the server hardware they (controllers) can already be integrated.
The idea to put two disks in raid0 under the archive is sorry, of course, but it gives away nonsense. Reliability is two times lower. Failure of any of the disks - loss of all data. Moreover, if the failure is physical (damage to sectors for example) - that's all, the data is unrecoverable. Why such a backup that you need to backup yourself?
Everything valuable should either be backed up regularly, or stored on raid1 (or better, both and the antivirus is fresh)

Answer 6

The reliability of all HDDs is now very low. Drives above 2 TB are significantly less reliable, and the larger the drive, the less reliable it is. Thick "pies" made of plates, the slightest distortion - and everything wedges hard. Helium there.
Therefore, several smaller disks are better.

Answer 7

It's not clear why you need RAID at home.
What will he give you? Uninterrupted operation, or greater linear speed? Why all this may be needed in a home PC?

that in home mat. boards without a hardware raid for several thousand dollars, it makes no sense to use a raid at all

Nonsense. RAID is perfectly implemented programmatically, what kind of mat is there. no difference fee.
Hardware RAID with a large cache is cool and provides great performance.
But the cache is only effective on large queues.
If you have a large queue on your PC, the cache will work efficiently, the disk performance will increase, and there will be wild brakes.

the speed of writing / reading small files will be even worse.

Why would she be any better? In the case of RAID, it will be either worse or about the same.

Will there be a performance gain, say, in games and everyday tasks, if the system is on an SSD, and all other files are on raid 0?

Depends on a bunch of factors.
For everyday tasks, the system and frequently used files on the SSD are more profitable, where the speed is an order of magnitude higher than that of any RAID from the HDD.
And the rest of the files - yes, at least write down on punched cards, this will not have much effect.
Usually a low-speed capacious HDD is bought for them.

Answer 8

With raid zero, you will have two points of failure with a complete loss of data instead of one in which something else can be saved.