Hard Drive Combinations. A question?

My M17X R4 currently has the stock 500GB HDD with a 60GB Vertex 3 being used as a cache via Intel's Rapid Storage Tech.

I'd like to upgrade given the drop in price for SSD drives. I'm looking at the 128GB Vertex 4 for £80.

Am I correct in saying I have 2 x SATA III and 1 x SATA II bays?

I use my M17X primarily for World of Warcraft and several other games. I do a bit of web surfing.

My plan is to put Windows 8 UEFI and WoW on the 128GB in the first SATA III bay. Put the 500GB HDD in the other SATA III bay. Then put the 60GB SSD in the SATA II bay and still use it as a cache for the 500GB drive.

Is that all feasible? Your thoughts and opinions please.

Many thanks.


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Put both SSD in a SATA III bay and then use a CD drive replacement unit to put the HDD in since it will run as SATA 2 in that slot and HDD's can't make use of SATA III speeds.

 

Ok thanks. Could you elaborate on what a CD drive replacement unit is please?


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I think he means the Caddy drive. It has the same shape as your normal optical drive. It's like an adapter, you fit a 2.5" HDD into it and plug it into the optical drive space. So really, you can have a maximum of 4 ports, including the mSata.

To answer your question, you can definitely do that. But if you want to do RAID on both SSDs, they should be the same model, to ensure stability. So unless you have 2 Vertex 4 or 2 Vertex 3, there is really no point going for RAID. Instead, leave the 60Gb Vertex for caching, you can buy 2 SSDs ( lol ) and do RAID on them, replace the optical drive with a HDD for storage.

 

Chris, here is what they all mean by a CD drive caddy: 2nd HDD or SSD Caddy for Alienware M15x (replaces optical drive) [OBHD-SATA12-SATA-NF] - $43.00 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks
This is what I have in my m17x. The caddy itself fits where the optical drive goes, and that will give you the ability to add a third notebook drive. That's three notebook drives in total and an mSATA SSD which you can have in your system.

 

Hi, your original idea works just fine. IF you already have your mechanical drive cached on the msata port then just add the new ssd, change the boot order and install windows to the new ssd. This will operate at sata III and your mechanical drive will continue to be accelerated by the cache drive. In my experience the difference between sata 2 and 3 is minimal on an SSD anyway.

 

I agree, seems like the easiest way to go. Just install the SSD, change boot order and once everything is up go ahead and delete the partition on your HDD and start using it as storage.
You'll need this for the clean installation - M17x R4 Drivers

 

I would stay far away from anything OCZ. You should stick with Samsung, Crucial, or SanDisk. Intel is good as well, but overpriced.

 

Ok, I'm a little confused.

I think I maybe got muddled up with the amount of available ports. Going on the above replies, I'm guessing it's:

1 x SATA II (in use by the optical drive)
2 x SATA III (1 in use by HDD, 1 in use by cache SSD)
1 x mSATA (not in use)

That kind of limits my options I guess. I don't want rid of the optical drive, as I watch BluRay on that, so that's one down. It leaves me with 2 x SATA III and 1 x mSATA to tinker with.

I'm basically trying to get as much SSD space as I can, as affordable as I can. Which leaves me thinking perhaps I should sell on the 60GB Vertex 3 and purchase as big an SSD as I can and perhaps even a 60GB mSATA to act as cache for the mechanical drive.

Thanks a ton for your replies so far, much appreciated.


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Actually, you can purchase an enclosure for your optical drive. So it's not like you are throwing it away. I was assuming your Vertex 3 is in mSata slot. Guess it's not. But this is a really good choice. I don't think you would need a big mSata. 32Gb probably far enough. 256Gb 830 is for sale for $170. Just get it now .

 

Correct. Newmodeus.com sells a Optical drive enclosure that connects the disc drive to the eSATAp port on our notebooks. But that is probably not for you since you use your ODD so often. The more expensive performance option would be to get an mSATA for your boot drive: Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD3 mSATA 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD),

...and then two 2.5" notebook SSDs set in RAID 0 for your storage drive, like a pair of Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) would give you 500GB of space in RAID 0. Again, not the fastest setup because the mSATA will not run as fast as the two SSDs in RAID 0. Its also pretty pricy. Other than that, you can always get a single SSD and skip the mSATA drive and just use the SSD for your OS and Programs and the mechanics HDD for storage.

 

Would the enclosed optical drive via the eSATA be fine for playing BluRay movies through? If so, I'm more then happy to take it out and enclose it, use it as an external.

Unfortunately though, you're quoting US prices and websites. I'm in the UK so will need to dig a bit more. Although I think newmodeus.com ships internationally.

Any idea which of these is suitable:

http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=476

http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=437

Also, they do two SSD caddys for Alienware M14X and M15X. Either of those going to be suitable for my M17X?

http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_46

Edit: just re-read Radji's earlier post. Thanks for the link.

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Since your in the UK,you can get another mSata drive, there is one for £75~ for 128gb. I think 256 is around £150. Search on amazon uk they have them, I believe they are manufactured by crucial. Although a samsung 830 256gb is £130 (amazon uk). Depends what you want to do.

I have the basic 500gb hard drive, (using it for data) and when my 17x arrives gong to put the samsung 830 in as the boot drive.

 

Yeah, I'm with DDDenniZZZ. It would probably cost less and be far less work to just get a 256GB mSATA drive, uninstall and sell your 60GB SSD, then buy another 500GB mechanical HDD and use it with your existing HDD for storage. Then you can still have your OS and programs on SSD and enjoy the speed boost while having loads of storage and not have to fiddle with your optical drive. Especially since you use your optical drive so much. Might be better to just leave it in there and go the mSATA route.

 

Ok bit of an update and some advice needed please.

As I previously mentioned, my current setup was the 500GB HDD with Windows 7 and a 64GB SSD acting as a cache.

When Windows 8 launched I took advantage of the upgrade offer and installed Windows 8. So my current setup is as above, but now with Windows 8 installed.

Anyway, I ended up purchasing a Crucial 128GB mSATA SSD which I installed last night (wow, didn't realise I needed to strip the whole laptop down to install it! Should have looked more into that lol).

My plan now, is to clean install Windows on the 128GB mSATA drive. So I booted up with the setup DVD for Windows 8 and entered the setup process. At the point where you choose to custom install and get presented with a list of your HDD's the only one that appeared was the 128GB mSATA drive. I tried to install but it produced an error about being unable to install to the drive (I can't recall exactly what the message was, I'll try again in a mo and update this post).

That problem aside, I can't understand why the other two drives were not appearing in the list? I have a suspision this may have something to do with BIOS settings relating to UEFI etc. or I need to load SATA drivers.

So, the parts I need help on are as follows:

a) With regards to BIOS settings relating to UEFI etc. what should I be setting here? Just enable UEFI and make sure my Windows 8 setup is on a FAT32 drive?
b) I will want to format both the 64GB SSD and the 500GB HDD. Should I be concerned about losing the rescue partition?
c) Do I need to locate some SATA drivers so I can see those two drives in the Windows 8 setup so I can format them from there, or should I not bother with that at that point and do it from Windows later?

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

 

From what I know its easier to install windows 8 if you can clean install its easier, just remove the 2 HDD's (SSD and 500) and leave the mSATA in and then install windows 8, then install all the drivers, I don't think the windows 8 installtion likes the SSD acting as a cache drive. Otherwise you need the drivers I think, but easier just to remove the hard drives then install and replace them.

Your BIOS should be set to UEFI and HDD mode as AHCI not RAID OR SATA and turn off legacy support. This will enable fast/secure boot.

 

The recovery partition is a different partition from the normal, everyday partition you use. When you install Windows, it will format the partition, not the HDD. Partitions on HDD cannot be undone by formatting. So as long as you do not touch the recovery partition, it will always stay there.

 

All sorted. Have Windows 8 installed on the mSATA. Can't enable secure boot however as I understand there is a known issue with dedicated GFX cards. Shame. Hope they release a vBios update that sorts it out soon.


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glad you got it all set up!

 

You have the 3d screen I guess?

 

Nope.


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Oh in that case you should have been able to use secure boot and fast boot, only thing is that booting only requires the integrated graphics dedicated gpu is not used during secure boot, up to you if you think its enough of a priority, but it should be definitely possible since you have the integrated graphics, only machines without the integrated graphics would have an issue with secure/fast boot as the drivers are not secure/fast boot compatible. Problem is to make it work you would have to clean install again I think?

 

Hang on though. If Secure Boot needs integrated graphics then you can never use dedicated graphics because to switch to dedicated graphics using the hotkey in Windows you have to restart the system. Having dedicated graphics is kind of key to a gaming system really. I can't do without dedicated graphics.

However, surely I wouldn't need a clean instal to try it? Couldn't I just switch to integrated then restart. Enter bios and enable secure boot?


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To update. I booted in to Windows 8 then hit the FN+F7 hotkey to switch to hybrid. I was prompted to restart. After restart once, I checked device manager and noticed an ! next to my 675m. Leaving device manager I was prompted to restart again. After restart, I downloaded the Windows 8 drivers from Dell for the integrated HD graphics card and installed them. Again, I restarted. After restart I booted in to Windows one last time to make sure all was ok. Then I restarted and entered the BIOS. I disabled the 'Enable Legacy ROM' option and the 'Secure Boot' option became active. I activated it, checked the settings and then saved them. Voila! Secure boot works. Of course I have to keep hybrid enabled. I haven't attempted it, but I'm assuming if I now switch to dedicated graphics only again, secure boot will be disabled.

I have to be honest though, there is little difference in terms of boot speed between legacy (Windows on the mSATA SSD) and UEFI. Both are seconds.

EDIT:

 

Yeah has to be in hybrid mode, but I havent had any issues with enduro by nvdia their drivers are pretty good. Look like you were able to enable it without having to reinstall windows so well done and thanks for the info, keep that in mind for if i need to clean install some other time. The switching is dynamic and it works well on windows 8, you can go into nvidia control panel -> view -> display gpu status in taskbar then you will see an icon light up when your dedicated gpu is being run and which applications are using it too

 

Yeah you can right click an application and choose which graphics processor to use too.

Gah. Always confuses me when people mention Nvidia and Enduro in the same sentence! Enduro is AMD tech. Optimus is Nvidia's tech. For some reason Enduro has become the term used for switchable graphics on this forum at least!


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Haha, probably because people have more issues with enduro, forgot it was optimus, well at least its working without any issues