M17x R3 and Intel 510 SSD Installation

Okay, I saw all the posts here on ways to install this, but I just wanted to try the good old fashioned way of seeing what happens. Sooooo, here are the only steps I took:

1. Installed SSD in Secondary Drive Bay with regular HD still in Primary Bay
2. Booted M17
3. Downloaded Intel Data Migration Software
4. Ran Intel software
5. Chose to clone the HD to the SSD
6. Let software run through it's stuff
7. Rebooted M17
8. Went into BOIS and made the Secondary HD (SSD) the boot drive
9. Let the machine boot to Windows
10. All seems in order - boot times are fast, SSD appears to be the boot drive, etc, etc.

I'm still in RAID 0 though, and I have not tested to see if I'm getting the 6.0gbs benefit or not. So, my few questions:

1. Anything else I should do to make sure I'm operating properly?
2. What software can tell me if I'm running 6gbs?
3. Should I switch from RAID 0?
4. I somehow managed to utilize 73gb of the 128gb drive, but I only had installed 1 game of 7gb - this does not seem normal to me - did I miss something crucial or is there other bloatware I am not seeing?
5. How do you manage to store large files that normally default to "Documents" to your HD instead of the C: SSD? Itunes, save games, etc.

Crunchdaddy

 

Oh, by the way, I am a few days into proudly owning my M17x R3 - went with the 2720, 8gb, ATI 6970m, 1920x1020 display, plain old 320gb hd, etc.

Been very pleased. What a great machine. First Alienware for me. Glad I made the plunge.

 

1) If you are happy with the it is probably working ok, you could run 3dMarkVantage and if you get a score of 12k+/- then you are good. Here is what I got on 3dmarkvantage... Result Most people get similar scores on stock speeds.

2) Download HWinfo32, run it, look under Drives, SATA/ATAPI Drivers, select your SSD, then look next to driver contoller, it should say "Serial ATA 6 GB/s.

3) I don't think you can switch out of RAID once it is set for the OS, most people get BSODs and have to go back to RAID. You can change the settings in the bios if you want to try. I wouldn't worry about it.

4) This is the problem with cloning SSDs, you probably copied the Recovery partition, which takes up 10-12 gigs. I would format the whole thing, then do a fresh install with these instructions.... http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...install-ssd-instructions-recommendations.html This gives a brief overview of how to disable pagefile and hibernate which also take up about 4-8gb which you don't need with a SSD. More detailed instructions on how to setup a new SSD can be found here.... http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

5) Go to windows explorer, under "Libraries" select what you want (documents or music or whatever), right click, select properties, then delete the folders you don't want and "inlcude" the folders you do want. Ideally you should move all your data storage off the SSD to your HDD. I only keep Windows, programs, and games on the SSD. Music, movies, documents, downloads, backups, etc are on my HDD.

Hope this helps

 

I admit I'm a little afriad to wipe the SSD and try to install everything manually as my M17 is running pretty flawlessly at the moment. Still, I may give it a shot at some point.

In the meantime, I ran 3dmarkvantage and got the same score (actually slightly higher

I turned off hibernation and the page file and recovered a lot of disk space.

In looking at the SSD partitions, I see a 16mb healthy oem partition, a 6.6gb recovery partition, and the 106gb primary partition. Can I delete any of these?!?!?!

Thanks

 

You can delete the 6.6Gb recovery one, but I don't know if you can add it to the current 106gb one (maybe someone else will know how). That is why I'd do the freash install, but if you are happy then that is all that matters. If you do a clean install, remember to delete all the partitions and let windows make one big one for everything. You want your whole SSD on one partition so that TRIM can even the wear of the drive.