Try bundling multiple small-capacity SSDs that are difficult to use for game installation into one drive with Windows’ “Storage Spaces”
If you have been using SSDs for a long time, you may have multiple small capacity models in the 240GB class. It can be used in combination with an external USB case to store small amounts of data, but if you are using it to install games, you will inevitably feel that there is not enough space.
For example, as of early February 2024, the installed capacity of Starfield is “124GB” and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is “188GB.” These two alone won’t fit in a 240GB class SSD. If you want to install multiple games, you’ll want at least 500GB of storage space.
One option is to connect multiple SSDs to your PC and change the installation location for each game, but that is cumbersome and not efficient. A useful feature in Windows 10 and 11 is called “Storage Spaces.” It can be called software RAID, and allows multiple storage units to be bundled into one drive.
Its strength is that, like the RAID function of a motherboard, it is easy to use and does not require installation of drivers. The capacity of multiple SSDs can be combined and treated as a single drive, making it easy to use as a destination for installing games. This time, I would like to check the procedure for bundling 240GB and 500GB SATA-connected SSDs and the changes in performance.
You can easily bundle them using “Create storage area”
Here, we prepared SATA-connected SSDs called Crucial BX500 (240GB) and Crucial MX500 (500GB). Bundle them together so they can be treated as one drive. The verification environment is as follows.
[Verification environment]
CPU: Core i5-14500 (14 cores 20 threads)
Motherboard: ASRock Z790 Nova WiFi
Memory: Micron Crucial DDR5 Pro CP2K16G56C46U5 (16GB×2)
Video card: MSI GeForce RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X BLACK 8G OC
System SSD: WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe WDS200T1X0E-00AFY0
OS：Windows 11 Pro(23H2)
First, connect the SSD to your PC and start it up. Type “storage” into the search window and select “Manage storage” from the search results. Click “Create new pool and storage” and select the SSDs you want to bundle. Decide on the storage name, drive letter, and file system, and select “Simple (no recovery)” as the recovery type. Although this is not redundant, it is a feature that allows you to bundle multiple storages into one drive. Finally, click “Create Storage” and the multiple storages will be recognized as one drive.
Storage creation steps
This time, we will combine a 240GB Crucial BX500 (left) and a 500GB Crucial MX500 (right) into one drive.Enter “storage” in the search window and select “Manage storage”.The screen that appears Click “Create a new pool and storage area” and check the SSDs you want to bundle as one drive. Here disk 0 and disk 1. If the SSD has been formatted, it will be displayed as “Formatted Drive” and a warning will be displayed if it may contain files. If you have any necessary data, back it up in advance.Set the name, drive letter, and file system. Here, we have chosen “Storage”, “D:”, and “NTFS”. Basically, there is no problem with the default settings.Set the resiliency type to “Simple (no resiliency)” and click “Create storage”. The two SSDs will be recognized as one drive.
A drive created using the storage pool function is recognized as a single storage device from Windows. You can also configure the Steam installation location without any problems.
The bundled drive can be used as a Steam installation destination without any problems.
Some people may be concerned about the durability of older SSDs. Drives created using simple storage pool settings do not have redundancy, so if one of them fails, you will not be able to access your data. Therefore, it is not suitable for storing important data. Most games can be re-downloaded, and save data is often stored on the cloud these days. Even if a problem were to occur, the damage would be minimal.
In addition, to restore the SSD that was set in the storage area, you can do the following.
How to restore SSD configured with storage
If you want to restore the SSD, go to “Storage Management” and delete the storage area → delete the storage pool.Please note that all saved data will be deleted at this time.
Check performance
I’m curious about how the performance will be by bundling SSDs. A simple storage pool setting is the same as “RAID 0 (striping)” because data is distributed and written to multiple storages. Therefore, it is also expected that performance will improve.
Here, we will use “CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4c” and “Final Fantasy XIV: Akatsuki no Finale Benchmark” to measure the data transfer speed of SSDs using three patterns: Crucial BX500, Crucial MX500, and simple storage pool when SSDs are bundled. I checked the performance with the loading time of .
The 4K Q32T1’s random reads and writes were probably due to the distribution effect between the two devices, and the data transfer speed was faster in the storage area, but other than that, it can be said that the data transfer speed was almost unchanged. You can see that you cannot expect a dramatic increase in data transfer speed like with RAID 0.
Note that if you create the same storage area by entering commands in PowerShell, the data transfer speed will improve, but the difficulty will increase at once. If it’s for gaming purposes, you should hardly have any complaints about loading at this speed.
You can also expand the capacity of your storage pool by adding more SSDs later. How about using this technique to use your spare SSD as a drive for installing games?
