M17x R4 HD combo (mSata or no?)

Just wondering should I look to do a 256gb msata SSD (I have already installed a few for other forum members) and use 2x 750gb HD's in raid 0 for games/documents/music. Or should I go with this Samsung 512gb 840 SSD I have (Got it through our vendor at work) and then use a 750gb drive for games and stuff. On the 512gb I would keep my music and documents and some of my games.

 

Totally down to how you want to use it. Personally I'd go for the 2x750's and keep it simple to manage. The only technical thing to know is that the msata port is sata 2 so your boot drive would be slightly slower - but I never noticed it in use.

Thinking about this and one option would be great IMO. Depends on budget but get a smaller msata and set it to cache the 750gb drive and use the 512 you have as the boot drive? Your frequently used games and data would then get ssd speeds as well

 

Second option by far!!! 512GB SSD... that's huge and a great speed increase, you'll have a really hard time filling that up. No way you need almost 2 terabytes of memory on your laptop xD

If you really want to make it beast, make the second drive a hybrid one with msata cache. IMO that is a far better choice

 

This would definitely be my choice, using the msata as a caching device will give you very nice speeds or the games in the 750gb HDD.

 

Ok so just pick up a 32 or 64gb cache drive or one of the Seagate 750's???

 

Just the cache drive, put the ssd you have in the spare drive port and you're good to go

 

Ok which size cache should I get?? A 32gb or 64gb??

 

32 should be fine but if the price difference is not too much then I'd go for 64gb

 

I'd go with the 512 SSD for OS, games, and programs, with the 750 HDD for storage. It would be the fastest option. You also wouldn't have to worry about a raid array going down and trashing your stuff.

Why in the world wouldn't you want to put your games and programs on the SSD? That's what it was made for. Use the 750 as storage and forget about the msata. Running games off the 750 with the msata isn't going to be as fast, period.

The more components you add, the higher chance of failure and in this case, the slower choice.

KISS principle.

 

I do a 256GB SSD and 750GB HDD combo. No caching drive. It works well. All my games are loaded to the D drive except for the ones that need SSD speeds. I don't mind loading times so as long as the HDD doesn't cause any in game issues it's all good for me.

 

That is almost the setup I have. My SSD is a regular 2.5" SSD, not an mSATA (only have an R2), and I have two WD 750GB Scorpio Blacks in RAID 0. Not sure how well the mSATA drives perform, but yes, the mSATA drives only go to SATA II. I store all my blu-rays and DVDs on my RAID array so I needed it to be as large as possible. The choice is all your. If you really need a large storage volume, then the mSATA/HDD RAID 0 setup is worth considering.

Another option to consider is to keep your 512GB SSD and get two 750GB HDDs. You can take out your DVD/Blu-ray drive and replace it with a caddy that holds one of the 750GB hard drives. Buying the two hard drives and the caddy would be less than or equal to the cost of the mSATA SSD.

 

Is the ODD bay SATA2 or SATA3?

 

SATA 2. But it doesn't matter, if you put a hard drive on that SATA port, it will still perform at the same speed as if you installed it into one of the other drive bays. HDDs can't make SATA III speeds, only two together in RAID 0 can come close to SATA II speeds.

 

Don't you have an external HDD? I have a 2T external HDD I bought it before the flood in Thailand. And now I'm regretting I should have bought more than 1. Thinking of buying enclosure with at least 2 slots but looking at the price, it's kinda crazy.

 

Yes I do but it doesn't work well to install stuff to an external drive.

 

I was actually talking to radji since he does a RAID 2 x 750Gb which is a lot of storage for laptop.

How many games do you actually have on your SSD? I figure out you could install at least 15 games and still have 50-60Gb left on the SSD. I don't think I play that many games at once. Radji stores bluray and dvd on his laptop so it's another story. But if I were you, I would just delete games that I don't play anymore. I assume you use Steam so you should be able to redownload the games in case you want to play it again. That's how I manage with my 128Gb 830 anyway but I probably upgrade to a 256Gb 840 Pro soon. Oh well, it all come down to your budget and how you use your laptop .

 

I had an enclosure, it was a RAID enclosure. I used it with two 500GB HDDs in RAID 0. But the enclosure's RAID controller failed, not the drives. I plugged the drives into my desktop and was able to retrieve the data off of them no problem. I'm not really into single drive enclosures since I will have to hook it up into my wireless router (no room next to my R2 for the enclosure to sit) and once it gets filled up, I have to buy a larger capacity drive. There weren't many drives over 1TB in 2011 to choose from. And I don't want to have to leave my desktop on all the time while my m17x is on. The only affordable (less than $200) RAID enclosures out there both use the same steelvine RAID controller which failed me before. At the time where I was deciding between creating a RAID array in my R2 or making a new network one, the 2GB and 3GB external hard drives from Frys were (and still are) really expensive. Plus I was not sure if they would play well with my Netgear router. So, it became more practical and cheaper to buy two WD7500BPKT drives from Frys. I got both for $85 each from Dell. Those, and the drive caddy from newmodeus cost far less than a 2GB external drive.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. So pretty much going with a 512gb SSD for OS/Documents/some games and a 750gb HD for my steam games and other junk.

 

I'm still running a crucial M4 128gb as my primary and have 6 steam games loaded and still have 38gb free on c:\ you should be fine loading all your games on the SSD unless you like to have 100 installed at once

 

I'm suprised nobody runs RAID 1 to keep their docs safe.
I realise the IOPs on writes are halved but read IOPs remain the same.

 

I just checked my installs and I have 206GB used on drive D and 35GB used on drive C. That doesn't include games installed on drive D from Origin.

 

47 games = 357 GB on mine