Suggestions on disk / mem config on 17 R2?

So I ordered a 17 R2. A lot of good information in this forum, thank you. At least with a GTX 970m I hopefully don't have to worry about power supplies Not being a power user or likely to upgrade it, its a spiffy deal at ~$1500.

However, I obviously didn't buy Alienware's memory or disk upgrades at this price (they seemed mightily overpriced and its easier to get it past the budget wardens in smaller chunks). I was wondering if someone with more experience with the platform could make suggestions on this:

1) Regarding the disk config, if I understand correctly I can put in up to (4) m.2 SATA chips. I recall reading that there was a size limit of 512mb although I could have just imagined it. I am wondering what the actual limit is, and what the best configs are. For example, would it be good to get 4x128MB and take advantage of on-board RAID to stripe it? (if such a thing exists). Or could I do 2x512 to make a 1TB disk through striping? Also is there any particular brand that particularly sucks or is particularly good? Will either size work or do I need the long ones?

2) Regarding memory - any reason not just to buy OEM SODIMMS from amazon or something? I understand I am probably maxxed out at 2x8gb chips which is a bit weak but it'll work for a while

3) Bonus question - does the installed partition have a way to make your own setup ISO's? I didn't spend the $20 to order physical restore disks because I wasn't sure if it was necessary. If there is some kind of setup partition I made a good call. If not, I was silly.

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

 

Hi, well, mines not due for a couple of weeks but I believe I can advise on some of your questions (my own research).

It looks like it's 4 x M.2 AND a 2.5 HDD bay (that you can buy SSD's to fit) As for RAID, unless there is some restriction I am not aware of you can mix sizes just for getting a single drive letter (no redundancy). Watch out for M.2 SSD's though. They come in two flavours, SATA or PCIe. Not interchangeable. The AW is SATA M.2 - taken from their technical spec).

Memory, my weakest knowledge here so I have no idea of the maximum the BIOS can cope with. My usual way of identifying what I need is to send a request with the P/N of an existing module to a memory supplier, and ask what fits. Dell mix suppliers as and when prices suit them.

Backup. All my AW's (3) had a factory restore partition. It can get your machine back to exactly the same as it was when you first powered it on. You get backup software - AlienRespawn. Not a great (flexible) backup program but it does have some nice features. You have the option to create your own bootable 'snapshot' to either USB or DVD. No create ISO option .

If you fire it up and the factory partition is not there (like if you replaced the SSD) it prompts to create one and resizes the partition to accommodate the backup.

Good luck.
Oh, yes, it does have on-board RAID (IRST).

 

Thanks MickyD1234 - I found the manual on the unit and it does say 16gb max, but who knows.

As long as Alienware will let me back up the recovery partition from the shipping hard drive (1tb platter) and lay it down on SSD later I'm good. I dont mind running off disk to start with, I need the space for VM's (Linux) and such.

 

Oh well, another downgrade . I'm sure you can restore the factory partition to another drive but I'm not sure of the process. Usually a snapshot backup (and this can be to the existing drive) is the way I've done it. I think that the AW software cannot resize partitions on a factory restore so you have to use disk manager to add the un-partitioned space on the new drive, it might even be unable to restore to a smaller drive? I think I saw someone that came up against that restriction.