M17x R4 SSD Question

Hi, I currently have a 2x 500gb raid 0 hard drive in my m17x r4 and wanted to know if I can place a sata3 ssd into it. I wanted to install windows 7 home on it but I don't have the FULL OEM, just the alienware recovery. Do I need to buy the full windows 7 to install on the SSD or can I use the dell provided windows 7 software? Also are all 2.5 inch sata3 ssds supported by the m17x r4? I am looking to purchase one for around 120 dollars, do you guys have any leads on where I should look and what brand is reliable? When installing the SSD, I would have to place it in bay 0 correct? bay 1 is for the secondary hard drive? When pulling out my RAID 0 hard drives, I will have 2 500gb hd's, will I be able to use one as a storage in bay 1 after I installed windows 7 on the primary SSD? Or will they only work together? For formatting the 500gb 7200 rpm hard drive, do I do it through boot/restart or through windows disk management? Will I be able to format and use the secondary storage hard drive after I install windows 7 on my SSD or do I have to format it before I install windows on the SSD / remove the 2x Raid 0? Worse to worse, will I lose all my alienware apps, utitilies if I use a brand new full windows 7 home premium installation? I noticed the dell provided alienware windows 7 recovery comes with all the utilities.

I was looking at purchasing this, is this any good?

http://www.ncix.ca/products/?sku=60445&vpn=CT128M4SSD2&manufacture=CRUCIAL TECHNOLOGY&promoid=1230

 

Yes. But you will lose your RAID array. The R4 only has room for two 2.5" notebook hard drives and an mSATA SSD. So if you want to get an SSD while keeping your RAID drives, consider getting an mSATA and using that as a boot drive.

Did your R4 come with the Alienware Windows 7 disc? If not, you can always get in touch with Alienware and ask if they can send you the OS DVD.

Yes. 2.5" SSDs are all 9.5mm tall. That is the standard for a 2.5" notebook drive. Some newer hard drives (not SSDs) are taller because they are over 1TB in capacity. As long as the drive is 2.5" by 9.5mm tall. If the drive is taller, it will specifically tell you so.

Newegg usually has the better SSDs for reasonable prices. Crucial M4, OCZ Vertex 4, Samsung M4. There are just a few of the good SSD models. Kingston and Intel have their own SSDs which users here in the forums will swear by. I use a Kingston HyperX SSD in my R2. Never had a days trouble with it. But it cost me almost $300, so that is way higher than your price range.

Yes, the SSD in Bay 0 will get SATA III speeds. If you want to use one of your RAID 0 drives for storage, you will need to format it after you install windows 7 on the SSD. The downside is you will lose all the data stored on your RAID drives...for good.

You can format thru Windows disk management service. That's the service I use. I would recommend formatting the secondary storage drive AFTER you install your new SSD and get Windows set up on it. That way if something goes wrong with your SSD, you can always pop the RAID drives back in and away you go.

Crucial M4 is a great drive. What will you be using it for? If you really need the speed boost, I can understand why you want to go with SATA III. But if your only doing general usage and computing, consider going with an mSATA drive. Its just like a regular SSD, but smaller. You can install Windows 7 on it, and still keep both your RAID drives in so you won't lose any of your data. The downside is mSATA slot on the R4 is only SATA II, even though some of the mSATA drives out right now are SATA III. Plus, you will have to make sure to set your mSATA SSD higher in the boot order list than the RAID drives, or the R4 will boot from the RAID array instead of the mSATA SSD. The choice is yours, so figure out which is more important to have. The SATA III speeds, or having the storage of a RAID 0 array. Let us know if you need anymore answers.

PS: here is the Crucial M4 mSATA SSD (128GB): Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD3 mSATA 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

Wow, thank you! You cleared up all the problems I was having!

I was thinking to grab the Crucial M4 tonight from NCIX for 100 dollars. The mSATA, I though a better choice, but I wanted to go straight for the SATA III and remove RAID 0 due to potential issues it could have in the future according to feedback.

I don't know if the alienware came with the full windows 7 dvd, I will check, if not, I guess I will have to buy a new windows 7 oem for 100 dollars =/ or I can contact dell.

I have taken apart and assembled components in my old laptop fluently but with the m17x r4, I am relatively new to the architecture, and also since it is a new and expensive machine, I don't want to screw things up, should I get this hard drive thing done at NCIX or should I do myself? They charge 75 dollars just to swap the drives.

 

I would use one of the disassemble videos on youtube to do show you how to do it. It's always good to know how to take your machine apart if needed.

 

You should have the Windows key at the bottom of the laptop. If you take the battery out, you will see it. You can probably find a copy of W7 Home Premium online, burn it on a disc and install it. Use the key at the bottom to activate W7. But the laptop should always come with a W7 installation disc.

If your main concern is not the size of SSD, I can suggest you try a 128Gb Samsung 830 for $70, providing they are still in stock.

 

$70!?! What truck they fall off of?

 

TSSDR Deal of The Day - Samsung 830 6Gbps 128GB SSD Now at Amazon For $69 - The SSD Review

It's already out of stock at that price. It was pretty crazy, I know.

 

So if I installed windows 7, will I lose the Alienware based login screens and other entities that were Alienware exclusive? Alienware login logo, when starting up etc.

 

This thread will show how to do put all configure all of those things after a new install.

Thread: HOW TO: Restore the Alienware 'Look and Feel' after a clean install of Windows 7

 

Hi everyone

Am a bit confused regarding the SDDs.

What is the difference between the SSD installed in slot 0, and the one installed on mSATA slot (boot drive?)

Is it possible to install a game on mSATA SSD?

NOTE: my priority is gaming performance, I don't care about the startup time

 

The system/BIOS does not see it any differently. The only differences are one is a full size SSD and the other is an mSATA. The other difference is the mSATA port in the R4 can only run at SATA II speeds, I believe. But don't quote me on it. You can install an mSATA and run it like you would a full size SSD, with your OS, programs, and games all installed on it. It acts just like a normal hard drive/SSD. If it's speed your wanting, an SSD in slot 0 will be at SATA III speeds, vs the mSATA which may only run at SATA II. This may or may not be noticeable, it depends on the performance of the SSD and the game in question.

 

I guess am gonna go with an SSD drive on slot 0 + 1 TB sata HDD on slot 1.
Given the purpose of a gaming laptop, I'll try to maximize the gaming performance.

Thanx a lot radji

 

Not trying to thread jack but what problems arise with raid 0? Isn't that the best configuration on a laptop for fastest performance? I got 512GB SSD in raid 0 to 2x256GB SSDs. Should I change my order to a single 512GB SSD? Which is better?

 

Simply SATA II or SATA III, and the current maximum size available.

I barely noticed the difference belveteen 2 and 3 on a previous machine's SSD apart from a couple of seconds on boot.

 

anyone have an answer for my question??

 

No problem at all. It might not be exactly the quickest but you'll never notice and you do get the convenience of a single drive. No need to turn it off even if you only have a single drive, it's needed if you want a cache drive on a mechanical drive later and it's not that easy to change it after windows is installed.

If you turn it off after an install you will probably have to re-install windows.

Only problem I am aware of is that sometimes during a win install it uses a compatibility driver instead of the intel Raid driver. This causes windows to BSOD during the install. Quite easily fixed but note that dell have it installed and active even on single disk machines. The overhead is so small that only hardcore overclockers are going to see better numbers

 

When you say "sata 2 or 3" do you mean from the machine side? Or the drive side?

 

BWT, di you think adding a caching ssd on mSATA slot will noticeably increase the gaming performance on a machine that have an SSD (on which the OS is installed)?

There is also a 7200 rmp hard as a storage unit.

And let's assume that the game is installed on the SSD.

 

Machine side for the speed, I had a SATA3 drive operating on a SATA2 interface.

For the size, mSata's are not as large yet in any sata mode (well, I haven't noticed them?). I would expect the difference to be more noticeable with sata 3 HD's

 

Maybe am missing something here, slots 0 &1 do support SATA III , right?
Plus, mSATA SSD will not contain actual data (OS or games), it only cashes frequently used applications right?

 

Not quite. the drive bays are sata 3 and the msata is sata 2, but the msata can be whatever you want. It can be a standalone drive with the OS installed OR it can be used to cache a mechanical HD. It's in hardware so your choices just got a lot larger! You can even designate only a part of an SSD to be a cache, but I've never done it.

 

Since I move games around I can say that the change is barely noticible between the OS from SSD and games from the HD. Yes, it would be nice to skim those couple of seconds during load or chapter changes but not a bigggie for me. If a game is disk intensive I just put it on the SSD until I'm done with it. Then move it over for future. If I thought it was going to be way better I'd have got off my a** already and put one (cache) in

In game performance will not be changed wherever you run it from.

 

Great, that clears things a lot. Thanx man.

Assigning some space on the main SSD as cach seems a good move.

About the SSD brand, any suggestions? I do not want to spend $50 more on unnoticeable increase in performance.

 

Can't help with brands I'm afraid. There are a lot of threads and one name I see often is Crucial but I've not been in the market for one.

Further reading needed if you want to do the cache on a new large SSD : Chipset Software — Intel® Smart Response Technology User Guide

It's a generic doc and all the bios stuff is already done as default on the M17x

Good Luck.

Edit: Forgot to add, if you do decide to go for a large SSD and make a small Cache for the HD give me a shout. It's an interesting project and I've got a few ideas to make it as painless as possible

 

I think I will need more than luck with that

I was thinking about the
Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB
And does it need an adapter? Or just slides in the slot directly?

 

lol, it is kinda prop-head stuff! If you want to keep it simple and safe, just put in your SSD of choice, change the boot order, and install windows fresh. You can always change the boot order back if you get into difficulties . Everything else is a much lower gain IMO.

Heard that SSD name as well with no bad things said. I have a Samsung 830 factory installed.

There's a tray and interposer (connector) that should already be in the spare bay. If it is missing dell will send you the parts FOC (they have for the two people I saw that had them missing!)

 

All of this is confusing me lol. If we have 512GB SSD set as raid 0 so 2x256GB SSDs (which I still don't even get what raid 0 is), is our computer going to run faster than a single SSD because raid works as splitting the work load between 2 SSDs so in theory it should run faster than a single SSD by itself. Is this true or bs?

 

Me too, am gonna avoid raids for now. I Will get one SSD + one HDD.

 

Does this connector have a name? A siza? Coz confused, some say it is needed and others say it's not.

And I don't think I will get that connector with the laptop. Better find another one that doesn't need a connector.

 

Well I wasn't avoid Raid. I ordered my m17x from dell with the raid because of what it says online of how it splits the work between 2 SSDs so obviously 2 SSDs are more efficient than one. But I'm wondering if it is really that much faster. Also to your computer from what I have read it still reads the drive as one single SSD if you have raid set up properly.

 

What you are referring to is 'striping' which RAID drives can do, it depends on if it is setup for speed or data safety.

Quick rundown; RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) has many modes and was developed from the server market. The most common config I have worked with is RAID 5, where at least 3 drives are used and you loose the space in total from one of them. This means that any single drive can fail and the system can carry on working until it is replaced.

On consumer products RAID 0 is the usual where it is used solely to get the total size on a single logical drive from 2 or more physical drives, without redundancy. With SSD speeds I would not expect any real difference in access speed for an array, especially as RAID has a small overhead in itself that a non RAID'ed drive would not.

All I know is it is called an interposer and sits between the computer and the drive. It should be there, unless dell have started to save a little by leaving it out. It has to come from Dell as it's for this model (AFAIK) and is drive independent, all the drives have the same connector but there may be a commonality I don't know about?

 

My concern s that I may not find the interposer in the lap, coz am buying it from Amazon. It is new though, but there is a possibility that they have removed it.

This is it:
Dell Alienware M17X R4 2.4-3.4GHz i7-3630QM 2GB 7970M Full HD 6GB 1TB 7200rpm W8:Amazon:Computers & Accessories

I do not know if " Computer Upgrade King" is trustworthy.

 

So then basically when using raid 0 with SSDs the real benefit is that if a drive fails the computer can still run since it doesn't soley rely on just one drive? Is that correct? So then raid 0 is better to have than just 1 single 512GB SSD.

 

Is RAID really that important in gaming? I've seen RAID 1 option on DELL.
If you don't have personal data on the SSD, then data restore is your latest concern when the SSD fails.

 

OK. my recent experience, hopefully it will answer one or two questions here:

My machine came with a 750 GB HD and 64 GB mSATA SSD set up as a cache drive. Supposedly. However, when I looked in Windows Explorer I was able to see the mSATA drive and then running the Intel IRST software I could see Dell did not actually set up the mSATA drive as a cache drive. It was simple to fix that and I did (details in another thread.)

So I added a 512 GB SSD, a Samsung 840 Pro and kept the 750 GB HDD+64 GB SSD mSATA cache drive. I think some people here are talking about having a SSD as the OS drive and a HDD as an extra drive - that's what I do. The SSD is used mainly as a storage drive and the SSD is used for programs and the OS. I'll also move some files from the HDD to the SSD if I'm doing work on them - for example, I do a lot of video editing, so I'll move video files I'm working on from the HDD to the SSD while I'm editing them, then back to the HDD when done.

On installing the SSD: the Samsung 840 Pro fits in the caddy in bay, and is very easy to install (as I would guess any 2.5 inch SSD will be.) If your machine comes with an HDD, this will be the empty bay in the middle of the machine when you take the back off (which is REALLY nice and easy on the M17x!) You'll unscrew the caddy in this bay, remove it, unscrew and remove the filler thing that is screwed in the holder, slide the SSD in the bracket, screw it in, attach the interposer (which is just the thing that allows the SSD to plug into the computer) and then pop it all back into the computer. It is much simpler to do than explain!

I left the system in RAID 0 (I was really confused until several people here like MickyD1234 above helped!) because that is what my HDD and mSATA drive used to cache. I didn't do any striping or putting the new SSD into an array, etc. Just kind of left the computer in RAID 0 and ignored it.

If your system comes with a HDD and the OS installed on that OS, you'll want to install the OS on the new SSD and make it the boot drive. Be aware that, after you do that, you'll need to download and install all the hardware drivers on the new SSD, so unless you have another computer to do that with, you may want to download the drivers first so you'll have them on a flash stick or something to install from.

I may just start another thread with my experience on this! Anyway, I think you'll find the SSD is great for anything that has a lot of hard drive interaction, such as the OS and a lot of programs, but the speed comes from getting things back and forth from the drive (duh!) So if you have a program or game that doesn't do much with the hard drive, you will get your speed increase from the CPU and GPU and not the SSD (but the M17x with a fast GPU like the 7970 or 680M will be pretty impressive with those too!)

 

That was helpful Jeff.Thanks.

I think I will go with Samsung 840 pro 128GB SSD.

am buying the lap from amazon, it is new from "computer upgrade king". They say they only upgraded the HDD to 1TB. Do you think they have removed the interposer from the second bay?

If so, can I get this interposer from amazon?

 

I would get at least 256GB not 128. I have 128GB m4 crucial on my desktop and a western 1TB hard drive and I am regretting it. I will upgrade it soon to 512GB SSD primary 128GB secondary and 1TB western for the third drive.

But this is why I got the 512GB SSD and 680m on this laptop to rectify my old mistake. Plus I only upgraded to the mid level i7 since there isn't really a big difference between the mid and highest i7 dell offers. Same as there wasn't any noticeable difference between the i5 3560k and i7 3770k when I was deciding on my desktop but I got the i5 for 300 dollar less and the 670 FTW card has the same performance as a 680 for 200 dollar less.

So keep price in mind and the hassle you may have to go through down the road if you decide to go cheap.

 

Am interested in this matter, may I ask why do you want to increase the SSD storage? What do you use it for?

As for cpu, well for mere gaming, i think that you will not notice that much difference between the i5 and i7.

 

You know how it goes with storage - you never have too much! I also think I'd suggest going with 256 over 128 - down the road you won't regret it.

On the interposer, I would guess it would be there, if not you might contact Dell to make sure you get the right one. I see one on Dell, but a reviewer said it doesn't work with the R4 version (so apparently you need to make sure you have one that works with that revision.)

 

I'll give it a though... my plan was to only put the currently-played games on the SSD.
I guess, as you said, I will not regret it.

As for contacting DELL, well... as u can see am in the end of the world (Iraq). So it can get very complicated.

 

Me neither but unless someone has used it it should be there. If not one of the reps on here will probably be able to help you get it.

Think I'm making it more confusing than it is
One RAID option will be to mirror the data meaning that the total space available will be only one drive but either could fail without data loss or the system stopping. You can add more drives tro this config and the total will always be minus 1 disk.

With combined totals there are two options, one is for speed where data writes are delayed in preference to reads and then the other which gives more security for the data by immediately committing writes but slows it down. The two options shown in the doc I posted. One single large SSD is a better option IMO but can be more expensive than 2 smaller ones. RAID was originally to economise on the cost of larger disks, as well as redundancy, hence the 'inexpensive' in the title.

 

Thanx micky, I'll go for it and see what happens.

 

Good Luck, if you're working out there for the US forces, Dell have a web site specifically for military discounts I believe. I've seen some get some great deals!

 

The reason for this is that my windows OS and games are on my SSD. I only have 34GB left so probably I can fit one or 2 more games on it. I want all of these things to be fast so they have to be on the SSD according to what I have been told. The 1TB HD should be used for all other things like word documents, pictures, etc... things like that.

 

The SSD is not going to make your games any faster, just better load times at start. I've played with putting them on both with very little difference (a couple of seconds load time). I've got over 600GB of games so I kinda have to use the HD anyway

 

I like my 2 second load times lol. But if it is only a couple seconds extra then I might as well save my money and just put the remainder of games I buy on the HD.

 

lol, I can relate to that! I just have too many games to afford all SSD storage. I still move or install my latest game to the SSD and then move it later. That's how I get to compare it, n yeah, snappier is nicer but it's not like you get to wait too long for the load

 

Ughh I just want my laptop lol. Unless it comes with problems then I don't want it. I'm tired of watching youtube videos of it haha.

 

I wish you all the luck! Watching that order status - refresh, refresh Followed mine across the globe which was interesting but in the UK you get the shipping info from the factory to your door...