Alienware M18x R2 mSATA AND SDD Upgrade Advise

Howdy, I read Peter guide on upgrading to dual 980m a few days ago and thought since I would have to do a reinstall for windows 8.1 anyway. I would upgrade my hard drives also so I bought 2x Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD and a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB mSATA.

I stumbled across this article at alienwareusersupport and was wondering if any of the tweaks they have listed are useful or mandatory for when I make the switch to the new SSD drives? Also should I make the new MsATA a caching drive, OS Drive or just return it and get a smaller mSATA drive?

 

I wouldn't make it the OS drive per say, its limited to SATA II vs SATA III on the main ports. I would get the cheapest dollar per gigabyte SSD and use it as a storage slot.

Correction on the 840 EVO: apparently only the 2.5" drives suffer from the degraded performance. I still wouldn't trust a TLC drive, so I would return it and purchase a MLC drive instead.

 

Cashing an mSATA SSD is only needed if one has a slow HDD so it would cache the most used files and OS files on the SSD and they usually put a small 32 - 80 GB mSATA SSD only for caching

1) Your Samsung 850 PRO is faster than the mSATA SSD so if you set up caching, you would only hurt your performance

2) look at my signature, I have a very similar setup to yours

Here is how I set things up and I think it would be the optimal solution for you:

Samsung 850 PRO 256GB (I installed the OS and programs on this only, disabled Fast Boot since SSDs are super fast anyway, turned off the page file completely via powercfg -h off )

Samsung 850 PRO 1TB (I store my drivers installation files, software installation files, and install the games there. the partition is named D

Samsung 840 EVO 1TB mSATA (I stored my personal files there like music, pics, videos, documents)


For your setup, I would use the first Samsung 850 PRO 512GB for the OS and even the games maybe unless you have a gigantic collection.

I would store the software setupfiles and drivers on d: (the second 512GB 850 PRO)

and setup the the users folder on the mSATA 1TB SSD


You can also RAID the 2 Samsung 850 PRO 512GB in RAID 0 mode if you want but bear in mind that will not double your performance necessarily under a normal workload like playing games and surfing the net, it will however double the speed if you were to do large file transfers or want to convert a lot of video files since the sequential read/write speed will double. The 4K doesn't hence why I don't do it myself, it's all about the 4K when it comes to OS snapiness and RAID has a slightly higher latency (just slightly) than a single SSD

 

It isn't problematic, I have 1 in my main system and one in another, TRIM works, the drive has consistent performance unlike the 840 EVO btw, it's strange, but I had problems with degraded performance in my 840 EVO 2.5" but not in the mSATA. it always gave me consistent performance

PLUS, there is no better mSATA SSD in the 1TB range and it would serve great as a fast storage drive to have the videos + mp3s + pics, etc.

Here is my latest benchmark on the mSATA 840 EVO 1TB:

 

Edited post to reflect that, I thought any and all 840 EVOs were affected. I still wouldn't use a TLC drive in my system, EVER.

 

not the mSATA, I have tested it extensively and what's surprising is it's 4K speeds are a bit higher than my 850 PRO man

Now I share your same opinion, I would never buy a TLC SSD, but not when I don't have options, there are no 1TB mSATA SSDs at the moment other than the EVO so I'd rather take a TLC mSATA SSD than nothing right?

Now when it comes to 2.5" SSDs, it's a whole different matter, I wouldn't ever use one.....after owning two 1TB 840 EVOs....hell no, those things did drop performance so bad.........mSATA is a diff. deal and I don't know how but it is.......since they are both EVOs, I don't know what the magic in the mSATA is......

 

I wouldn't RAID the 850s either, definitely stick to the fastest solo drive you can find for OS and applications. The rest, I would do a little differently. Cheap price/size for storage, and an Intel SSD for important documents/backup due to their reliability. I personally use a X25-E, but I am considering getting a 240GB 730 as well for documents and important backup.

Also, if you're new to SSDs, disable hibernation as Ferris stated, and if your RAM is large enough, disable the pagefile as well.

 

Thank you both for all the great information! Ferris I just found your awesome post on all the samsung hard drives.

Should I run in AHCI mode or should I keep it in RAID mode?

While searching around the forums I found an older post that says:

" IMPORTANT: Always leave your Alienware BIOS set to RAID. Do not use AHCI. Using AHCI provides no benefit and introduces multiple functional limitations. Using RAID includes AHCI mode by default. Using RAID in the BIOS applies even if you only have one HDD or SSD installed." here.

 

I personally run AHCI, I have no use for RAID, so I set it to AHCI to skip the Intel option rom page for faster boot

Ferris, that mSATA is not on a M18x R2 right? Those are SATA III speeds.

 

That is true on the majority of laptops they sell because the usual configurtation includes 2 750GB 7200 RPM HDDs in RAID 0 mode + a 64 - 80GB mSATA SSD for caching and in that case you would wanna keep it in RAID mode.

But for a single SSD, AHCI wins and you need to set it to AHCI and have Windows installed while in AHCI mode if you simply switch between RAID and AHCI your laptop won't even boot unless you do a registry trick to allow the switch which I don't recommend. Install Windows in AHCI mode and be done with it

 

Did you check my signature bro????? LOL

It's an Alienware 18 and those are SATA III speed indeed.

 

Yup, I see that now. I was browsing as guest and I didn't see your sig.

 

You cannot use Intel SRT to cache-accelerate an SSD using another SSD. That is not supported and it does not work... only applies to HDD acceleration. SSD can only be accelerated using a memory caching software, such as PrimoCache or a proprietary software such as Samsung RAPID. And, doing so it mostly smoke and mirrors. Using a memory cache software does improve the real-world experience, but it does not make the drive itself any faster. If you are overclocking or experiencing any kind of stability issues, say from buggy drivers or messed up Windows Updates, you will want to disable this because it can result in data loss or even OS corruption that renders your machine unbootable because data held in memory is volatile. Whatever is not written to disk, or partially written, will be lost or damaged.

 

Good evening everyone.
I apologize if i ask a question that may have already been treated in some other topic but i could not find anything.
I bought yesterday a Msata EVO Samsung 1TB and i installed it on my M18x.
Unfortunately i noticed a striking slowness of support and after some benchmarks with results well below the average of that product) i that the device works to 3Gb / s.
Is correct or is there something wrong?
Thanks, as always, for any suggestion.

 

Yes in the M18x R1/R2, mSATA slot is limited to SATA II...

 

Ok, thx for information

 

The M18xR1 does not have any mSATA slot.

 

Yes and the R2 (due the chipset generation) can only support 2 SATA III ports so they were put in the more common 2.5" bays.