How to configure RAID 1 (or 0) on m17x that didn't come with it

This was a far more painful process than it needed to be, and since I didn't see it documented anywhere on the forum, I figured I'd try and spare others my pain.

A special thanks goes out to Marvie100 the Notebook Deity for their help and support through this torturous process!

So you bought an m17x, the Allpowerful, the God-among-laptops, the-laptop-they-call-a-portable-desktop, and now you have more processing power and speed at your fingertips than was used by the combined space programs of the US and USSR in the sixties and seventies.

You boot it up for the first time, and angles rejoice, light flows from the heavens, and you instantly feel yourself becoming more attractive to the opposite (or same if thats your thing).

What more could you want?

You begin copying your copious amounts of data over only to discover that either through your own ordering negligence (which was my case) or simply due to bad luck you only have one drive rather than the expected two in RAID 0.

This tutorial is to help you fix this.

For the sake of my sanity, I assume that you already have the second hard drive physically installed (including bay and transposer). If not, good luck, and this thread has some good tips on how to secure the required M17x - Hard Drive Caddy. The only issue I had in obtaining it is that they didn't send it with the second hard drive I bought from them (even though I was assured it would come with it when I ordered it, at no extra cost), they sent me just the caddy without a transposer...twice, before they got me everything I needed. Oh, yeah, and each of the kits they sent only had one screw...

You will need the following to complete this install:

m17x - Make sure you are plugged in, I have no idea what would happen should you be in the middle of this and run out of juice, but I suspect it wouldn't make you happy.

thumb-drive/usb drive with the Alienware M17x Notebook nVidia MCP79 Chipset Driver A00 for Vista64 drivers on it. I obtained my from here and then decompressed the files to my trusty Toshiba USB drive, but you can likely find just the drivers themselves for download elsewhere without all the "extra" padding.

Alienware Product Recovery DVD (not the resource DVD or the Alienware Respawn kit)

Make sure your optical drive is empty before starting this process (or has the Recovery DVD in it). Otherwise... here are some tips and (here well) for ejecting a DVD when you have no OS.

---------------------------
Step One
Boot the Allpowerfull and access the BIOS by pressing F2
Select advanced tab

Here is where you can adjust your clock speed (Thanks The_MOO) I don't recommend setting the FSB to 1333 if you have Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9000...

Arrow down to SATA Operation. Press enter and select RAID



After doing so "NV RAID Configuration" will appear below SATA Operation.
Arrow down and select it.

Enable NV RAID Configuration and both drives.



Press F10 to Save and Exit your changes and reboot.

After reboot you will be given the option to press F10 to enter the RAID setup utility.



From here set your RAID and desired Stripe Block. Note if you select mirroring you won't need to set the stripe block.



Move the two drives over to the right using the arrow keys.

Press F7 to finish and press Y twice.

This will take you to the array list.



Select the Array and press B to make it bootable.

If you haven't put the Alienware Product Recovery DVD in your drive, do so now.

Hit CTRL-X and you will exit the system. In what strikes me as sloppy coding on someone's part, CTRL-X did not reboot the system, just exited the array manager leaving me with a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. Your mileage may vary.

Power the system off, plug in your usb device with the array drivers and power the system back on.

Do not enter the BIOS or the array manager.

You will get a message warning you to check cable (do not be alarmed, this is expected). A few moments later you will enter the windows vista setup program.

Select your language (English, Spanish, and Portuguese were my choices)

Select next and set your location.

Next will bring you to the Install now screen.



Click Install now.

After a few moments you will get a screen that says "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing". This is because the system was not originally configured with a RAID configuration and so your disk does not have any RAID drivers.

Click browse and navigate to the drivers (in my case C:\IDE\WinVista64\sataraid) and click OK.



Select the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller and click next.



Watch the green bar do its thing and accept the license terms, select custom install and select the RAID drive (not your USB/FLASH drive although that could be funny).



Hit next and finish out the Windows install.

After Vista comes up (and isn't it nice to have a system capable of running Vista?) set everything backup, configure the system to your liking, and wait until Windows 7 arrives (mine is scheduled to be shipped first week in November), after which I suspect we'll need to repeat this process (for a clean install).

 

Thanks for sharing! I've added this to the main post of the M17x General Info Thread.

 

Thats for the link on the General Info Thread!

I just wanted to add this link, which discusses exactly what RAID 0 brings to the table.

 

If I've only got the OEM Vista disk and the Resource DVD and I lack the Recovery disk, is the process the same? Do I simply replace the Recovery disk with the OEM Vista disk and follow the same steps?

 

Using your steps right now. Happy I still have my dusty old Inspiron 8600 around for backup. Went with Raid1 to try it out. An unfixable COM Surogate Error came back and this was the last choice to fix it.

Let you know how it goes......

 

So...... Everything was going great until this morning. Started to roll in the updates and now the Raid 1 setup is gone and the COM Surogate Error is back. I guess my benching days are over.

 

LOL, if you plan on using the Nvidia Sys tools be careful it wipe out your Raid setup.

As for the COM Surrogate Error, well, it is still around after a fresh install.

 

BatBoy started a thread on the Com Surrogate Error here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=422529

 

I did several clean installs of W7 with no need to separately install the RAID device drivers. Just FYI.​

 

Ok so I'm not sure where to put this but this is the only place I could find "RAID issues" discussion. MY problem is my RAID 1 setup on my 500gb seagates in my m17x (completely updated EVERYTHING) is that when it makes a nice annoying little clicking sound, it freezes the WHOLE COMPUTER for about half a second-2 seconds and does it whenever it sees fit. I'm thinking its the mirror copying itself over but i wanted to make sure because it literally freezes the whole computer and drops my LAN/internet connections for a HUGE latency time (this kicks me off of games such as starcraft) and also completely screws up my video rendering, making running any kind of movie from my hard drive a complete hassle. Please tell me there is something that can be done about this... if not, I'm buying an external 1tb hdd ASAP and making a RAID 0 because it really affects how i use this beast.
thanks in advance!

 

And if you're interested in doing this with Win7, here's a helpful guide.

 

I'm very interested in trying out a Raid 0 on my new rig but have a couple of questions...

Does this guide apply to the R2?

This is my first AW so -
Is the respawn feature located on the HDD or an accompanying DVD? If on HD, will we delete (or need to back up) a partition on one of the HDD when we do this?
If the respawn is on the HDD, can it be preserved and placed back on the HD after the Raid 0 is setup?
Maybe too many questions... My newbness is showing.
Thanks

 

For interested folks.

This guide does not apply to the R2 machines.

 

Wild question?

If a person has a ton of stuff loaded on his machine already and now wants to build the array, Will creating the array erase all the data using either Raid 0 or Raid 1?

Will that person then have to install os, (everything) fresh?

Just thought I'd ask.

 

Is this process similar on the R2 I already messed with it, but havent enabled it yet... just need to know if this is the right way on the R2

BIOS
go to SATA change from AHCI---> RAID

RAID menu comes up with the choice to enable
RAID 0 or 1 just enable RAID 0 and install windows?

 

@zofodraziw2005 - It will erase everything! You will be looking at a fresh install. Not always a bad thing... Back up your savegames and coveted data.

 

It is not the same, but very similar. I did it for the first time with no guidance... it went fine..

 

is that how you do it though?

 

Yes. Go into the bios, enable raid. I think you then save changes and reboot. I think then you are prompted to set the stripe size. AS I recall it was all fairly intuitive after that. I just installed W7. I wish I could be more specific. Like I said, it was my first RAID setup and I had no difficulties whatsoever. Despite searching this board and teh net, I never really found a decent step by step on setting up a RAID with W7. Maybe because it was so easy... I had very little data to lose though so I knew it was a no harm situation... Once you have all your stuff backed up you should be good to go!

You do have two drives, yes? Your signature indicates you have only one... You'll need two identical drives

Let us know how it goes!

joe

 

Yah i got a 256GB samsung SSD through dell and I bought another from new egg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220388

they don't have to be the same brand right just the same size?


Also what are the best Stripe size/width for these SSD's

 

same size, yeah.

same brand, no but: it will work but the slower drive will keep the faster one waiting

 

What about Stripe size and width?