Alienware M17x HDD upgrade question

HEllo all,

I have an Alienware M17x with i7 and 5870crossfire with dual 320GB 7200 hdd.

I was planning to upgrade the HDD's in it. I was thinking of putting in a 128GB/80GB SSD and 1TB hdd in it to improve user experience in it.

I found SSD can do abt 300 Mbps read/write. But If I just go for 2x Seagate 750GB 7200RPM 16mb cache HDD's in RAID config, will be able to offer a similar performance? I have seen it perform 116Mbps read/write and in RAID it should double up. This way my entire storage will be very fast and large at the same time. Instead if I get an SSD and a 1TB hdd I end up with faster loading and OS performance, while rest of my storage wud be slow.

I dont have much money to spend and its one of the main constraints. Whichever wworks out cost effective, I may wanna take that route. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Well according to your configuration you only have access to SATA II (3GB/s) ports. This limits the read/write of the new SSDs which can go alot higher than 300 (Intel 450 and OCZ 500), because of this and cost efficiency I would recommend going with the 2x Seagate in Raid.

SSDs are still quite expensive in GB/$$. Wait until you have access to SATA 3 and get an SSD then... thats my recommendation.

 

Alienware M17x r2 supports SATA-III hard drives. Besides thats not the point cos there are many SSD's that are SATA-II. I dont need SATA-III SSD speeds if I cant afford it.

I will stick to 2 HDD's I guess, but then I will have to buy both of em at the same time. While with SSD I can buy it and start using it straightaway. Decisions, decisions. Thanks anyways.

 

Raid does not beat standard ssds in performance at least.

That's a nice combination OP. I suggest Intel for reliability.

I think this would be the best place to get your answer
Solid State Drives (SSDs) and Flash Storage

 

Sorry to hijack this thread and change the direction but it has definitely taught me something new.
I'm looking at ways to improve the speed of the r3 that's on the way. Thinking maybe I should buy a 320gb 7200rpm HDD and set it in 'Raid' instead of buying a 120gb intel to go with it.
My problem is I am a pretty big noob at formatting hard drives and on how to install them properly. Is there anywhere I can find a guide on how to do this? Maybe someone can explain it starting with 'Raid, Raid 0'

 

I think dual HDDs is definitely NOT the way to go! Remember the important thing with speediness is NOT the sequential transfer rates but the 4k, 8k, 16k random reads which is what the operating system will do most of the time. The access time as well for an SSD is non-existent, whereas its still insanely high in comparison even with RAID. I use dual RAID HDDs at the moment but desperately want to switch to SSD + HDD. Why? Cause with RAID you don't get the super smooth and fast load speeds and works speeds that you get with SSDs. You will be able to "feel" your system speed up considerably with an SSD + HDD whereas with RAID you don't. Its just fast HDDs...
By the way, there's tons of articles on all the known hardware sites, anandtech, tomshardware etc. that all basically say exactly that. I doubt you'll be able to find any articles that say that RAID HDDs are better than a good SSD....

 

doesnt raid hdds also make hardrive failures more risky a standard hdd already has a higher failure rate than a ssd because of the moving parts in them, especially if you move your laptop around a bit and in raid 0 if one hdd fails you lose everything. ( would it be cost effective to raid ssds??? hmmmmmmm)

 

Yes, your chance of failure and potential data loss increase with HDD in a RAID 0 configuration. RAID 0 sacrifices data integrity for speed/performance.

In regards to cost effectiveness of RAID 0 w/ SSDs..... that can only be answered by you and your definition of cost effective. Personally, I would say no. A single SSD is not really cost effective. But it is performance effective!

RAID 0 w/ 2 x 750GB HDD = 1.5TB @ ~180 USD

RAID 0 w/ 2 x 256GB SSD = 0.5TB @ ~ 900 USD

 

RAID 0 with SSD's. lol its a long long way, atleast for me. I wud be happy if I cud afford a decent 80-120gig SSD.

Thanks for all the comments. I think moving fwd it would make more sense to have an SSD (abt 90GB) and I can save on later for a larger HDD. For time being I can use 320GB+ extra external 320GB n other drives for data.

So which SSD would I be able to afford with abt £120 in my pocket?

 

HDD failures can be brought to min by using Free fall sensor drives.

 

does the dell hdds have free fall sensors in them?

 

IDk about all of them but when i bought mine the 320Gb Seagate @7200 has.

 

Allmost all of DELL 7200RPM drives come with free fall sensor.

I have seen some applications that make use of the free fall sensor as a G sensor like you would find in most of the smartphones.

 

One of those, they are cheapest SATA3 SSD and one of the fastest
(Amazon uk prices) prices might drop soon because C400 is being released within days (c400 is minor improvement over c300)
C300 128GB 160£
C300 64GB 100£

I don't recommend Vertex 2, they are slower and have serious annoying issues sometimes or just dies after a while.

If you use Steam take a look at this SteamTool Library Manager 1.1 - Stefan Jones
Can basically move games from HD to SSD or SSD to HD whenever needed.

 

I finally decide and bought Kingston 96GB V100+ and a Samsung 1TB 5400RPM. After installing it all, realised I dont see a remarkable difference in performance. I know better how a proper SSD should perform (see my sig.) but I didnt get the performance I was hoping for.

I would have been better of raiding two 750GB 7200RPM and getting max performance out of my entire data rather than sticking in an SSD with all data on a slow drive. Would have been cheaper as well.

My advice to all, if money is a constraint I would suggest raiding (if you have 2 hdd slots i.e.) high performance drives rather than going via my route. Or maybe need a better SSD than the one I am referring to about.

 

SSD + big storage HD are good choice.