Upgrading - need recommendations

Hey guys. Need some advice on the type of ram and hard drive for my m17xR2.
It's currently on 4gb 1333 ram and 250gb disk space.
I'm thinking of going for 2X4gb hyper X and a solid state drive. Any recommendations on how I can get these for a reasonable price? And are there any reasons why i should not go for them e.g bugs and problems?
I called up dell and a 256ssd drive costs a whooping 570 pound, so yea, not very keen to get it from them.
I'm staying in the UK so any advices on local retailer is much appreciated.

Thinking of getting this
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG MZ-5PA256/US 2.5" 256GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

If you're happy with 250GB or so total disk space, then I'd go for TWO 120/128GB SSD's and configure them for RAID 0. You'll have roughly twice the speed in reads and writes, and the cost will probably be less than a single 256GB since the big SSD's get a premium price.

You don't need the fastest SSD's for RAID 0, because with some of the newer, highest performance SSD's, you'll actually max out the SATA channel with two. So, keep your read/writes to around 250MB/s or so, and you'll be smokin'!!!

The only risk is if one of the SSD's fails, you lose all your data, so backup if you need to. The thing is, SSD's are pretty darn reliable, so that's not that big of a deal.

 

Raid 0 is a bad idea. the general consensus is that a SSD+ HDD solution is for the best, offering the speed of the SSD + the safety of not having one hard drive tied to the other. the only raid configuration worth using is Raid 1 Imo. there are some good deals on solid state drives in the marketplace here.

 

until TRIM works in Raid I would not run SSDs in that mode,

I use a 256Gb SSD to boot, and a 500 Gb 7200 RPM drive for data storage ion my r1 works great, and boot time @ 30 seconds

 

Well, you know what they say about opinions and certain orifices...everyone has one.

In every notebook I've owned with two slots and RAID capability, I have used two SSD's for the added performance (2x speed). Depending on many individual user factors, TRIM may or may not be a deciding factor. I've not yet EVER noticed a speed degradation, but I don't sit there running benchmarks all day long (which, in and of themselves, can slow down SSD's due to all the writing they do). I'm a modest user, and don't fill and empty my SSD's many times over. In my case, RAID 0 SSD's are the perfect solution to give me the BEST performance. I don't keep anything on my notebooks that isn't either backed up via Dropbox or already on my desktop. If a SSD fails, I don't care. But, I'll bet my life on the reliability of an SSD over the reliability of an HDD.

There isn't an ultimate suggestion that fits every users needs. Mine was one to give the OP the same storage and twice the speed for less money. Period.

 

The problem with 256GB SSD's are the price, which the OP mentioned. I think most SSD's support Garbage Collection on a per drive basis, which in my case, seems to do something since I haven't really seen a performance drop over time with any of my RAID 0 SSD configurations (including my desktop with 2 x 128GB SSD's, which gets used ALOT). To this day, when I check the speed of my RAID 0 set, it's still up there where it should be.

 

I see the samsung 256Gb ssds on ebay now for an average price of $ 400.00

Thats not too bad of a deal really,

But generally running raid on a laptop (ssd not with standing) is not a good ideal.

and 2 x 128 Gb SSD drive still means not alot of storage space on the laptop, considering a newer game these days takes about 10 Gb to install, you can fill up a 256 GB drive pretty fast.

thus for the $75.00 for a 500 Gb hard drive, makes a whole lot of sense to boot off a SSd drive, and have a standard drive for data files etc.

 

thanks for all the replies. One question, if I do with one ssd to boot with, and a standard drive to store data, will I be able to raid them. Noob question I know><
And is the samsung internal drive I posted before suitable for the m17x?

 

+1 This is my feeling as well, and how I've been using my notebook. Gotta have space.

 

You really do not want to raid a 256 GB SSD and a 500 GB standard drive.

as we tried to tell you running raid on a laptop is not a good ideal

use the 256Gb SSD to boot from and have some of the more frwquent apps run from, and use the 500 Gb for storage and running lessor used apps.

The drive in the link would be fine, but if your in the USA I believe you can get the same drive from Dell for $ 500.00 and less on Flea bay

 

Ah sry, wasn't gonna raid. Was just wondering if it was possible. Thanks for the reply. tried calling dell...it costs 570 pound for a 256 samsung ssd. Will try to look elsewhere but so far newegg is giving me the best price.

 

well mabye a wierd raid 1 is possible bu anyother no

 

there are several listed on Ebay for $ 400.00 USD, sure there are some EU sellers out there as well

 

I see. It all comes down to how well do these SSD improve the gaming performance. Would it help much? I've heard people say they're good at loading times but what about in game performance?

 

There is supposedly some issue with the M17xR2 and smaller file sizes (4k blocks) that is way underperforming. Some have complained that standard hard drives in the M17xR2 load games and maps, etc., faster than the same M17xR2 with an SSD.

Typically, I believe SSD's do not help your in-game experience much.

I still stand by my assertion that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a RAID 0 SSD setup. You're just a screwed with a SDD + HDD setup should something fail, and you have a higher chance of such because HDD's are typically more prone to failure. I think people are scared of RAID 0 because they're mentally thinking of RAID 0 HDD's (which have higher odds of failing) but with SSD's, I'm very comfortable and love the performance.

 

Ok. After some searching, I've come to the ssd by OCZ.
OCZ Vertex 2E 240GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE240G) [] Internal Hard Drives Solid State Drives 120GB - 256GB

Would this thing be compatible with the m17x? And what about ssd's that use PCI-E?

 

It's not that they are worried about drive failure so much its that TRIM is not supported in SSD's in a RAID config so as performance might be great now once you unraid you will see the performance decrease, and even with GC it still will degrade faster than non RAID systems.

 

stay away from those PCI-E SSD's as the performance is limited and any sata 2 drive will be compatible with the M17x