3rd HDD setup

So out of necessity, I'm buying the HDD/SSD Caddy from newmodeus.com to put in a third hard drive. Just a couple of questions.
1. I know the newmodeus.com product page states its for an m15x, and in a different thread, people have been able to use it for their m17x, so it there any special modificaition I need to make to the caddy so it will install correctly into my R2?
2. There aren't any speed or reliability issues with using the 3rd HDD in RAID mode, no? I have another 750GB WD Scorpio Black on the way. I want to run it with my current one (same brand/model) with the new one in RAID 0 but wonder if the optical drive's SATA port has been limited to SATA 1 as the Optical ATAPI devices never go over SATA 1 speeds anyway?
3. Which program do all y'all use to setup your RAID array. Easus Partition Manager, or just Windows 7 Disk Management Console?

 

No answers yet? Cause I have another question: I want to run both the HDDs in RAID 0. My SSD is installed in bay 0 and my SATA option in the BIOS is set to AHCI. Do I need to set this to RAID and then would I need to reinstall my OS on my SSD even though it will not be part of my RAID 0 array?

 

I'd say you wouldn't have to reinstall the OS. As you're not going to boot from the RAID, it may not be necessary. I haven't tried it, so not 100% sure if the Option-ROM will show up in AHCI mode and allow you to create a RAID.

About the caddy, I believe the Optical drive is interchangeable within the M15x and M17x r2 models, which makes me think a caddy should be about the same thing for either platform.

About the SATA I or II, again, haven't tried so I can't tell you what speed it would have :/


Hope this little information helps!

GL

 

Muchas garcia. Everything ALMOST went according to plan. You were right, if you aren't planning on using your boot drive in RAID mode, there is no need to set it to that in the BIOS. The caddy fit correctly, and both my storage drives are reading SATA II (as reported by Intel RST). Easeus partition manager will not setup/format a RAID 0 partition. Windows 7 Disk Management Console does though...just for future reference. Two points of order:

1. After installing the 3rd hard drive, I had to reset the HDD boot order in the BIOS boot menu.

2. If I boot to the optical drive using the eSATAp adapter, I had to set the USB powershare option to disabled or my SSD will be missing from the boot list.