M17x r4 second hard drive questions

Hey All

So my current m17x r4 has only the one hard drive right now, a samsung SSD that I ordered with the unit. I want to add a second drive into the second bay. My question is if I decide to buy another SSD, after the physical installation, how should I configure the drive in the bios/windows disk management tool? And does this advice change if I decide to go with a HDD? Also, I noticed in the setup utility my SATA operation is set to RAID.. I dont know much about this stuff, but I thought RAID configuration was for using two identical harddrives to either increase speed or security? The other options are ATA and AHCI.. Im curious about all these things and want to learn more about them. I thought posting on here would be one of the better places to figure this stuff out! And what do the acronyms stand for when replying please! Thats what tends to confuse me most. Thanks in advance for anyone who replies!

Yak T

 

Once you install the SSD, just boot into windows, open the disk management tool, right click the Unallocated space and select format, same thing you have to do for a hard drive if you want to use your new drive as additional storage.

Did you order a mSATA? M17x R4 usually ships with SATA Operation in RAID mode to enable the mSATA to work as a caching device. A performance RAID configuration could be RAID 0.

 

Thanks for the reply. I did not order a mSATA, should my SATA operation still be set to RAID then?

 

Are you intending to put the SSDs in RAID 0. Many people do this and I have know idea why. SSDs for program and boot drives make read speeds incredibly fast (like 0.1ms) as well as giving you a mass storage drive. So I don't see the reason for a RAID of SSDs unless the computers soul purpose is gaming. If you have two hard drives not in RAID but running simultaneously like an SSD plus HDD combo they need to be AHCI.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

 

i have 2 drives and the Sata mode is set to Raid. It isn't in Raid-0 or 1...both drives act independantly, but intel recommends Raid for the setting and I believe it is more stable than AHCI

 

Yes you can leave it as RAID. If you are going to use the the other SSD as storage, there is no need to change the SATA operation because you won't have the RAID configured anyway. Having it in RAID gives you the option to build one, but doesn't necessarily mean it has to have a RAID. So you can go ahead and install the new SSD and just remember to partition it in Windows.

 

Thanks for all the replies! The second hard drive will be used for storage (music, videos, pictures, etc) so I believe im going to go with a 1tb 7200RPM to save some money. So after I install I wont touch the SATA operation, and will format the drive using windows disk management. I know this is probably pretty straight forward for the rest of you, but I appreciate the feedback and ill post again if I run into any problems after the deed gets done! Lets hope I format the right drive!

 

ahahahaha...lets hope so

 

This laptop is still blowing my mind! Everything runs so smooth! I feel sorry for my toshiba, it will be awhile before she ever boots up again!

 

Sorry if this has been answered before but if I run a 256 GB SSD with a 750GB 7200 rpm for storage, would that decrease battery life and if so by how much. Debating a 256 M4 SSD or a 512 gb M4 SSD. Its only 400 for the latter.