The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Alienware m17 xr1 SSD/Msata setup question

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Deuce100yr, Feb 28, 2016.

  1. Deuce100yr

    Deuce100yr Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have the above mentioned laptop that was originally shipped (2013) with 1 intel 80gb msata SSD and 2 750 wd black HDD. I just upgraded to 500gb msata and 2 1tb samsung evo SSD. I did a clean install. Not fully understanding how to configure them, I combined all in RAID0. Now, of the 2.5tb, I only see 1.36tb. Googling explained why (500+1tb+1tb+Raid0=3x500gb). My question is what is the best configuration given I want to maximize speed and storage space. I store a lot of 1080P movies full-length movies and TV seasons. I also wanted to have them all under one partition. I am not concerned with redundancy because everything is backed up on portable drives. I did seach this forum and couldn't find anything on configuring 3 large drives. If there is, or if this post is in the wrong sub-forum, could someone point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance
     
    Deuce100yr, Feb 28, 2016
    #1
  2. mariussx

    mariussx Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    173
    Messages:
    604
    Likes Received:
    190
    Trophy Points:
    56
    The best configuration for your scenario is 500GB msata as a boot drive and 2x 1TB evo as storage drives. Msata port in Alienware 17 (2013) is SATA 3 (6Gb/s). If your msata SSD if the same speed or faster than 850 evo, it will be fine as a boot drive. Ideally the boot drive should be your fastest SSD in the laptop, all the slower drives can be used as storage.
     
    mariussx, Feb 29, 2016
    #2
  3. Deuce100yr

    Deuce100yr Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Thanks for the quick response. Here is another question. Im returning the 500gb msata and will have a 1tb delivered tomorrow. (I wanted the 1 TB anyway) Would I still configure it the way you stated or merge all 3 Raid 0? Wouldn't that now give me a full 3tb drive? Again thanks.
     
    Deuce100yr, Feb 29, 2016
    #3
  4. mariussx

    mariussx Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    173
    Messages:
    604
    Likes Received:
    190
    Trophy Points:
    56
    You could use RAID 0 to combine the storage drives to 1 big drive. That way, if you have any serious software issues (or even failed msata ssd), you can wipe just the OS SSD and all your data stored on the other drivers would be intact. I would not RAID all 3 of them for this reason alone. At the same time, if one SSD fails, all of your data on all RAIDed SSDs would be lost. So if I was you in your shoes, I would still do the same thing - fastest drive for OS, others for storage either in RAID 0 or as a separate volumes.

    Dell article on how to enable RAID:
    http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/128788/en?c=us&s=dhs&cs=19&l=en
     
    mariussx, Mar 1, 2016
    #4