Windows 10: Windows RAID mirror with different SSDs?

We got a new workstation shipped with a pair of 960Gb industrial calss SSDs for the Windows Pro partition.However, because of immediate shipment requirement, the supplier installed SSDs of different brands:Samsung PM883Micron 5300Different controllers, different NAND-memory, different generations of ATA command set. Geterally SATA compatible and almost of the same size.The supplier has preconfigured the system in AHCI mode, not intel RAID.We have no time for fighting with the supplier, or reinstalling everything. I think about using Windows software RAID.So the question, is it safe enough for

:)

 

Trouble creating a RAID 1 Array

Originally, I wanted to create a RAID 1 Array using USB Drives lying around and test it out and see how well RAID 1 works. A message popped up when I clicked on the partition I wanted to mirror and said the operation failed because the Disk Management
Console is not up to date. It suggested I refresh it, relaunch it, or even restart my computer. I tried all three things, and it still wouldn't let me mirror the partition. Then I realized that maybe Windows won't let me create a RAID 1 Array on USB Drives,
so I went to the original plan I was going to do and grabbed my 500GB External HDD and my 120GB External SSD (they are both USB 3.0 connected enclosures) and when I tried to mirror a partition on my 500GB HDD using my SSD, it wouldn't let me use the SSD to
mirror it. So then I tried using my internal windows 10 SSD to mirror my HDD. But, I needed to shrink my main partition on my internal SSD and it wouldn't let me shrink it saying there was a certain amount I could shrink it to, but I could only shrink 135MB
at max and I have 89.4GB free on that partition. Any suggestions and help would be appreciated (and by the way, if you're wondering why I'm trying to run RAID 1 on an external HDD/SSD is just for testing and more file redundancy and performance).

 

Windows 10 / Raid 1: "Optimize" shows HDD, NOT installed SSD's

I HAVE NOT RECEIVED A COMPLETE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION: PLEASE, HELP!

In my new Windows 10 desktop computer, (RAID 1, Two SSD's), I see Optimize shows "Hard Disk Drive", NOT "SSD", and I want to be sure defragmentation is not applied to these drives, instead of the proper TRIM utility. What need I do? I found a reply for
this regarding Windows 8, but not sure how to proceed in Windows 10:



"Created on October 30, 2013

SSDs Showing up as HDD in system - Windows 8.1 GA/RTM

I had this issue during the preview and it appears to happen again in the final version of 8.1 as well.



Somehow the system is incorrectly registering my 2x RAID SDDs as HDDs, which thus during the weekly "Optimization" runs a defragmentation on them instead correctly running TRIM instead. Which is quite frustrating to see it's still in the final product.



In my preview thread the suggestion to fix this was to run WinSAT (Windows System Assessment Tool) from Powershell. It worked during the preview to correctly identify my SSDs and it appears to work in the final version as well.



The description on how to run it from my previous thread:



"Usually the detection of SSDs can be forced by running the Windows Experience Index (= WEI, file name: WINSAT.EXE).



You may have to run Windows Experience Index to force windows to detect RAID SSD in Windows 8.1.2013



Follow these steps:

a. Press “Windows key + W” from the keyboard.

b. Type “Administrative tools” without quotes in the search box.

c. Select “Administrative tools” option from the list.

d. Then right click on “Windows PowerShell ISE” and select “Run as Administrator” option.

e. Type “WinSAT diskformal” without quotes in the PowerShell and hit Enter.

“Win8.1 Preview - Manual execution of the Windows Experience Index.png - Bild entfernt (keine Rechte)”.

f. Close “Windows PowerShell” and run Windows Optimization.

g. This should detect “RAID configured SSD on Windows 8.1."



I highly suggest if you have SSDs, especially in RAID, that you check the Optimize Drives interface to see if it's correctly identifying your drives and if it isn't to run WinSAT diskformal from PowerShell."

In reply to Sumit (Independent Advisor)'s post on January 5, 2020

How can I verify/be certain? In the Windows 8 advice, copied from the Microsoft Community, you see there can be an issue especially in RAID (1) configuration, where the hard drive(s) are not recognized as SSD, and a corrective procedure is given (for Windows
8, but I have Windows 10). Is there some equivalent method to confirm my SSD's are receiving TRIM, not Defragment? I ran "optimize" manually, and to my eyes, the process looked exactly like the "defragment" I've run for years on my old, Windows 7 with HDD.
As you see, I want to exercise extreme caution in protecting these 2, extremely expensive 2TB SSD's.

• Independent Advisor

I agree to a certain extent about RAID that the things are unclear(I have to ask that to TPTB) but for normal configs please see this article from a Microsoft Employee.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRealAndComple...

In reply to Sumit (Independent Advisor)'s post on January 6, 2020

I did read the article you referenced. While I am not a very technical person, I can see my issue is different than the issue addressed in that article. The article revolves around how Windows treats, maintains a SSD, and in the example "optimize window"
the drive is clearly called "SSD" by Windows. IN MY OPTIMIZER, the drive is called "Hard Drive", and this is the first basis of my concern that the drive is not being maintained as a SSD.

I very much appreciate your offer to further investigate. Again, please note my system is RAID 1, with (2) mirrored, 2TB SSD's, "hardware based RAID" with the controller on the motherboard. I will await further information. Again, my issue/concern is
not so much how Windows maintains an SSD, rather whether Windows sees my array AS SSD.

 

Windows 10, RAID 1, Optimize Shows HDD, not SSD

I did read the article you referenced. While I am not a very technical person, I can see my issue is different than the issue addressed in that article. The article revolves around how Windows treats, maintains a SSD, and in the example "optimize window"
the drive is clearly called "SSD" by Windows. IN MY OPTIMIZER, the drive is called "Hard Drive", and this is the first basis of my concern that the drive is not being maintained as a SSD.

I very much appreciate your offer to further investigate. Again, please note my system is RAID 1, with (2) mirrored, 2TB SSD's, "hardware based RAID" with the controller on the motherboard. I will await further information. Again, my issue/concern is
not so much how Windows maintains an SSD, rather whether Windows sees my array AS SSD.