Hello, I have a 250gb SSD in one MiniPC and a secondary 55GB memory (built-in). I looked into the BIOS in order to set up a RAID0 as I want to merge both drives in order to get a bigger one but the option isn't available at BIOS. My question is, if I perform a software RAID in Windows 10, will I be able to use it when attempting to reinstall Windows? Thank you in advance.
You would have to setup raid AFTER the install. It would only be a mirror (Raid 1). They would also need to be the same size drives. You'd also need an edition better than Home. I think your stuck with standard setup unfortunately...
The RAID configuration you need is called JBOD (just a bunch of disks) not RAID 0. If you had the RAID 0 Option you could get a 2x55GB disk, not a 305GB one. That said RAID are stupid and/or dangerous depending the flavor. IN your scenario is way better to move there one of your folder that fits in 55GB, say your document folder, or a system folder like Program files (x86) then you have 3 choices #1 calling it D: and changing the registry accordingly #2 not giving a letter to 55GB disk and mounting it in the intended folder, just like you would do in Linux #3 Calling it D: and making a Junction between D: and the intended folder just like you would do in Linux with a symbolic link #1 would work even in Win98 #3 and #3 are more modern Unix like ways that works only on NTFS disks and since Vista (partly since XP) and is better to learn and use them,since most windows people have no idea of what a junction is or what mounting a filesystem means.
Yes it does, it's called RAID0. I've had a gaming laptop some years back that actually shipped with a config like this out-the-box (2 256GB NVMe SSDs for an advertised on-box 500GB storage), and I even added a 3rd 512GB SSD to the array just for fun; had a single 1TB volume visible in both Windows and Linux. For Windows, I did this through Intel's RST command-line utility (I had no BIOS config section for Intel RST). On the disk partitioning step, I loaded Intel's RST drivers, did Shift + F10, went to the directory with Intel's RST cli tool, ran some commands, and was then able to see one, giant volume from the Windows installer after refreshing the device list. The drives don't have to be the same size, connection type, or even vendor. You would get the 305GB (approximately) volume. I'm not sure if different RAID controller vendors have different definitions of RAID0 that are leading to the mixed-info being provided here, but I had no problems taking 3 different drives, combining them in RAID0, and having a single large volume presented to Windows for use. Does your BIOS allow you to change the drive controller type between AHCI or RAID? If you can select RAID, it's likely your RAID controller's vendor provides a command-line tool that can be used to configure arrays (Intel and AMD do anyway). If your board doesn't have a RAID controller or present an option to use it, then you'll need some software RAID solution, and I'm not too familiar with how Windows handles that, but on an unrelated note, software RAID is easy to set-up with Fedora Linux at install time.
Unless there is some obscure config with asymmetrical stripe size, no, RAID0 means one precise thing: Data are splitted equally on two or more drives, which means that you get the size of the smallest drive multiplied by the number of the drives, period. This is from wikipedia, which substantially repeats what I already wrote. That said I repet again block level raids are shadows of a past era, especially raid 0 is stupid. You multiply you risk of loosing data with nothing in return, other than some pissing context on disk benchmarks.