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    OWC 6G vs Crucial M4 RAID??

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Andre56, May 4, 2011.

  1. Andre56

    Andre56 Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi all, I'm hopefully going to get my M17X ordered this week. I'm planning to keep the CPU and GPU just want to upgrade the RAM and get an SSD. I thought I was set on an OWC 6G 128GB for $319 but I've looked at Crucial's M4 and it looks promising but due to the lower speed I decided on the OWC. However... it just sprung to mind that Crucial make a 64GB version for $129 which means I could get 2 for $260 and put them in RAID, and it's still cheaper. I'm not too familiar with RAID, always had single bay laptop. Does this mean it will be read speeds of 415MB/s x 2 so 830MB/s? And just which option would you recommend single OWC or dual M4?

    Thanks in advance.
     
    Andre56, May 4, 2011
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  2. Andre56

    Andre56 Notebook Evangelist

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    Anyone got any comments?
     
    Andre56, May 4, 2011
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  3. Simplified

    Simplified The Most Awesome

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    You will not get a 100% speed boost with raid 0. The speed boost is about 75%, so you will get about 650-700 MB/s.
    If I were you, I would take 1x crucial 64gb ssd as a boot disc, and a 1 tb storage hdd.
    Fast and small + slow and big has always been a killer combo.
     
    Simplified, May 4, 2011
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  4. Andre56

    Andre56 Notebook Evangelist

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    The plan was to have an 120GB OWC and a 500GB HDD but I thought the RAID may be better. Thing is I want 128GB of SSD space at least so it would have to be the 128GB M4. Would you recommend the M4 over the OWC in the same situation, not RAID just paired with a standard HDD? I should have an either 1 or 1.5TB external soon so I'm not too bothered about storage space, just need space for all my programs and games.
     
    Andre56, May 4, 2011
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  5. Simplified

    Simplified The Most Awesome

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    If you need 120gb ssd, I would go with the faster OWC. Your storage space will be to small if you run 2x 64gb in raid 0. You will not be able to install many games on that limited space. The computer will boot very fast with 1 ssd, and if you raid two ssd discs, you will only gain max 2 secs on a boot up.
     
    Simplified, May 4, 2011
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  6. Andre56

    Andre56 Notebook Evangelist

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    Ok thanks for the info, guess I'll stick to the OWC
     
    Andre56, May 4, 2011
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