M17x finally arrived at home. Awesome laptop!!!

Hello everyone. Today is my lucky day, chronopost delivered my laptop on Saturday. I was a bit surprised.

Now I am installing some useful software, I also purchased a Windows Ultimate 7 anytime upgrade cd from amazon which cost me $127(cheaper than 150$ of Alienware site).

As promised, I will make a little review of my laptop, and also take some photos of it.

Just a question, should I create a new partition, for example, a partition just for games(which take a lot of place). I am told that by creating a new hard disk partition, the laptop run faster. But I don't know if it is really true. I tried that on my old laptop, and the difference is not very exceptional.

Thank you for your help.

 

I dont partition unless I'm going to be running multiple OS'. I would recommend you disable RAID0 in your bios and have your 512 hd's as 2 seperate hard disks. This way, you can point windows Documents, Pictures, Music folders to folders on your D: drive and if you need to reinstall windows you'll never have to back up anything.

but that's up to you. I think Raid 0 is more of a pain in Laptops because you are not as flexible and can't make the best use of the 2 hard disk bays, ie being able to swap out the 2nd hard disk or 1st hard disk bay with other drives for troubleshooting performance upgrades whatever.

So my recommendation is

- Turn off RAID 0 in the bios (you might need to delete the array first)
- Install win 7
- Keep your downloads/music/pics/docs on the 2nd HDD bay and install all programs on the first.

Thats just me.

Enjoy the machine

 

Just read your sig and saw they're actually SSD's. I would definitely disable RAID 0

 

They way nick discribed is what I do with my two disks. One is for my programs and OS, which explains why it's the faster of the drives. The other is for my music, pictures, videos, documents ect. Which explains why I went for max space.

 

All right, but can you please explain more about how to disable the raid 0? Do I need just need to go to the bios menu and desactivate the raid 0 option?

When you say "have your 512 hd's as 2 seperate hard disks", does that mean that I should add 2nd hard drive my self in the laptop?

 

I'm not exactly sure how to disable it, read this thread and it will tell you how. I'm assuming it would be the same between the M17 and M17X. When your done and you go to "my computer" you will see two 256GB HDD's. It looks like since it's RAID 0 you will have to reinstall the OS with the respawn disc since in RAID 0 the OS is split between the two HDD's.

 

congrats you wait long time for it, and yes you can disable raid on the bios after that reboot on your windows cd and install it

 

When you disable RAID it is going to break your OS. So make sure you have any data you want backed up before doing so.

Congrats on the new system!!

 

And why couldn't I create another Partition without disable raid 0? what are drawbacks when doing that?

 

yes you can but many people found problems with raid set up

 

1. Back up anything you want to keep on your computer.
2. Go into your bios and set your raid from 0 to disabled.
3. Rebuild your OS on your primary partition by booting from your OS DVD and having it create your partitions at maximum sice and format - then install.

 

+1 for disabling Raid. You are wasting one SSD I think

Plus, it's always better to start fresh with a clean OS install.

A little OT: I was going to say that you should have visited the thread on getting Windows 7 cheaper with an .edu email address but looking at your system... man... you really maxed out. So my W7 idea is worth Nada. lol

Congrats on that monster.

 

hi just tell me what is the thread please. How could you create a .edu mail address? Please let me know. Thanks.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=447238

You don't create an .edu address. You must have one already. Or borrow it from someone. It's because the deal is for students.

 

Only 30$ discount? A bit poor. I have already French windows 7 professional, because I am student in Paris university, so I have my own license of w7 pro from msdnaa. But I don't want to upgrade to a French win7 pro.(i will have character display compatibilty problem). So what I do is installing the home premium edition for free by buying my M17x, and then buying an windows 7 ultimate anytime upgrade disc from amazon USA for $120.

I think I will do the clean install tomorrow so that I can cancel the raid 0. I must play left 4 dead 2 tonight. I cannot wait anymore^^. I waited 4 months for that and 2 months for my laptop. So I need to play first.

About the 2 hdd, so once raid 0 is disabled, one hdd be used to run windows and all annex programs(Mozilla,Internet,mcfee...), and the other one will be used for games music and movies, right?

 

You can use the second HDD how ever you want. I use it to keep all my documents in case a virus wipes out my OS and primary drive

 

It's $30 after discount. Not $30 discounted.

This offer is available in some other countries as well.

 

Here is an old thread I made asking people how they had their HDD setup. You might get some ideas from it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=411701

 

Grats on your new system!

 

What kind of problems are you guys referring to with RAID? Mine works great. I've always had just one hard drive in all of my notebooks, so I'm used to not having a built-in backup. I really like the extra speed.

 

Yeah you are right. But it seems that we cannot upgrade to windows 7 ultimate.

 

I don't think people have a problem with Raids. I think they are referring to the OP's setup of the drives. The speed increase is nice, but if you already have 2 SSDs, how much more speed will you get out of them? Better use them independently, and get your money's worth.

 

You ALWAYS need more drive speed

But yeah I see where that is coming from. Since SSDs often have transfer rates of over 200MB/s, which is already better than a dual 7200 setup, better to get the benefit of 2 separate drives.

 

If I do a clean install, do I still have all the software that came when I turn on the laptop for the first time? Do I need to install all the new released driver?

 

After you disable raid in the bios, you have to choose native ahci, legacy ahci or ata. Which one are you supposed to use? I tried both ahci options and only one drive would show up during the win 7 install.

 

EDIT- Didn't read properly

You will only have windows. You need to reinstall the other software from the alienware website or the discs that came with your computer.

 

Hi as Achilleuse said, I now have to choose between ATA and AHCI, and I fi choose AHCI, I have to choose between legacy or native ahci. I don't know what do all these mean, which one should I choose?

Also, after disable the raid option, my laptop cannot boot to windows, it said no ps found.

If somebody could help me, thanks a lot