Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Thanks a lot mate! It worked!
cheers

 

Hi everyone, I have a quick question about RAID. My m6400 came with a Raid setup (I keep forgetting the number lol) but it has 2 x 340 GB drives and copies the exact same thing on both for redundancy.

I have found myself needing more storage and was wondering if I should be worried about losing performace by splitting up the raid, and using one drive for my main HD and the other one as a backup, for example will i actually notice it being slower when copying large files? (i appreciate this can be subjective, but it'll still be interesting to see what you all think!)

Secondly I did look at the options on the program that loads when windows is booting up that organises the RAID setup i believe its called matrix storage. It did say it would need to blank both disks to undo the RAID setup. Can I not just take the 2nd HD out and then switch the BIOS to SATA and then put in the 2nd HD again. It might recognise it as an external one then and I can keep the data?

Thanks!

 

I'm looking forward on getting a third party 2nd hard disk for my m6400, but i´m not sure which specifications should I look for: Are there many sizes or thickness standards?

My first option has SATAII 5400RPM 2.5IN 8MB Bulk/OEM specifications, will it fit the m6400?

Thanks

 

Any 2.5 inch SATA drive should fit. Though it says it's the same thickness (9.5mm) my Samsung SSD is a little tight compared to all the different disk drives I've used but it still fits. But why 5400rpm? 7200rpm is noticably faster (to me anyway) and the 6400 is built for 7200 so why put in something slower? I've had Hitachis, Seagates and Western Digital and only one ever failed. It was a Seagate and died while it was still pretty new. I have an old Hitachi that has to have 20,000 hours minimum run time on it and it still serves as a good external storage drive. If budget permits I'd recommend a SLC SSD. The Samsung I have is incredible. Almost zero seek time and it still wows me loading big programs in a fraction of the time a spinning platter takes.

 

My M6400 has arrived
It really is an amazing evolution from the M6300.

T9600, FX2700, 1920x1200 .. already added 4gb ddr3 to a total os 6gb. Will replace the 2x1 in a near future.
Got a Gsill 64gb SSD Falcon and on the 2nd bay a Seagaste 500gb.
Next update will be a Q9200, quad for the masses

Really happy with it.

 

cool,
you have identical specs to mine

i just installed the windows 7 RTM,
just made for the M6400, things open so fast

 

What is RTM? I'm not up on all these things. How's it different than the RC I'm playing around with? And don't all Covets come standard with the 3700 GPU? Just curious. Dell Costa Rica doesn't even offer a Covet, mine came from the States and the local Dell dealer is perplexed about the orange case.

 

RTM = Ready to Manufacturing .. something like that.
It's the final version.

Using it already, very smoth.

 

Oh. I really need an acronym dictionary for all this stuff. I'm curious how it differs from the RC (which I do know is 'release candidate') which I only downloaded a week or two ago. A repaired Vista is my impression of it so far. Half the size of Vista but still almost 3 times the size of my XP and I sure can't find 5GBs worth of anything that makes it worth that much space. I've had Vista on my 6400 and was surprised that outside from a slight stutter with the sound it ran pretty fast and without any major problems. Compared to a lot (but by no means all) of the posters here I'm only semi literate computer wise but I do know how big a GB is and it's just not there or so well hidden I can't find it. The 'XP mode' is more trouble than just having it as a second boot choice. It's more like a default fix-it for all the problems they might be expecting. Or something like that. I already got the 'bubbles' screensaver onto XP which is the only thing so far that's impressed me about either of XPs hoped for (by MS) replacements. And even it has lots of optionial settings that Vista and 7 don't offer. Maybe the Vista disaster was all planned so that when they released the real Vista everybody would fall all over themselves with relief and appropiate levels of astonishment and acceptence. But seriously, help me out here. What do you find about it (leaving aside all the visual decorations) that makes it any better than XP? Like 5GBs better. Try as I may, I just can't find it.

____________________________________________
Precision Covet QX9300, 4GB (2x2), Samsung 64GB SLC SSD & 320GB Seagate, XP Pro with the standard Covet upgrades

 

A Release Candidate means that it is almost ready, but MS is still gathering feedback. It's more stable than a beta, and released to a much wider audience.

Release to Manufacturing is what OEMs will start installing on their hardware. It's essentially the finished version: any changes to the RTM will be through Windows Update.