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    Sdd on M17x r2 questions!!!

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by walz25, Dec 15, 2011.

  1. walz25

    walz25 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ok I'm a noob and so far this site clears my mind about things.
    I have an m17x r2 840qm prossesor and I recently bought a ocz-agility 3 120 gb ssd.
    Looking to this benchmarks OCZ Agility 3 SSD review it seems that mine is not installed it properly or missing something because it only gives me half of what I'm supposed to get.
    I know my laptop only has a sata 2 connector, do I need a sata 6 to achive this benchmark? Should I buy another sdd and put it in raid 0 with the other one so I can have the same bechmarks? :confused:
    Thank you in advance :)
     
    walz25, Dec 15, 2011
    #1
  2. The0ne

    The0ne Notebook Consultant

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    Like me, it's because the SSD is running off of SATA3 instead of SATA6. I'm getting half speed with my Crucial M4.
     
    The0ne, Dec 15, 2011
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  3. zoolian982

    zoolian982 Notebook Deity

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    R2 doesn't have Sata6, so it wouldn't work.
     
    zoolian982, Dec 15, 2011
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  4. walz25

    walz25 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yes but I was wondering if I connect another agility 3 in the other hdd port and raid the both of them would I have double the speed?
     
    walz25, Dec 16, 2011
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  5. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

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    You would get almost double the speed. But it would only be 2x SataII speeds. If I were you I'd just get a SataII drive. A G.Skill or Agility 2. THen you can pocket some change.
     
    widezu69, Dec 16, 2011
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  6. Apocy

    Apocy Notebook Enthusiast

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    First of let's get some things straight:
    1. R2 doesn't have SATA 3
    2. SATA6 does not exist
    3. SATA2 speeds are 3 gbp/s - in the real world it is around ~300 MB/s (though on paper it should be more)
    4. Agility 3 needs SATA3 to achieve these speeds
    5. Agility 3 used on R2 will achieve a max of 285 Mb/s read/write
    6. Only way to have more than 285 mb/s read/write is to have 2 SSDs in Raid 0 - in your case, you need a 2nd Agility 3 and you'll get better speeds.

    As simple as that :)
     
    Apocy, Dec 18, 2011
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  7. flingin

    flingin M17x R2 Mafia

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    By saying Sata 6 he meant sata6,0 Gbit/s - named sata 3 :p HAHA
     
    flingin, Dec 18, 2011
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  8. charlie22911

    charlie22911 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Also, keep in mind that your increases in speed are not linear with each additional drive. There is overhead in using RAID, and two SSDs which are each capable of saturating a 3gbps port could cause the controller to be quite a bottleneck if it is not capable of handling such a workload.

    And to add one more point, most of the improvements you see when moving from a conventional drive to a solid state drive come from the phenomenal access time of SSDs. While SATA II will limit throughput, most of the "real world" performance benefits will be there.
    If anything you will benefit more from adding a second conventional drive to house data and programs that don’t need that speed, because the more you fill a SSD the slower it will get.
     
    charlie22911, Dec 18, 2011
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  9. walz25

    walz25 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the advice and tips guys, should have done a research before rushing in...I followed charlie22911's tip and kept my ssd for my os frequently used games and programs and my junk files and rarely used programs at my 1 tera hdd...problem solved
     
    walz25, Dec 19, 2011
    #9