factory recovery(AlienRespawn) on RAID0 possible?

I'm getting M17xR4(with 500gb single HDD) in a couple of days and I have two M4 SSDs ready. I'm planning to go RAID0 the moment it arrives.

Did a little bit of forum search but I don't think it's been discussed.

Can I use factory recovery disc (created from running AlienRespawn) to go back to the factory state with two SSDs in RAID0?

Since M17x has factory-option of RAID0 for both HDD and SSD, I thought AlienRespawn might have built-in routine for aftermarket RAID0 setup, as in my case.

or is that a wishful thinking?

anybody tried it?

 

No need for a new thread. It's OK to "resurrect" an old one when it has useful information. This has actually been discussed ad nauseam in threads scattered throughout the Alienware forums, but it hasn't been a huge topic of interest lately. Possibly, the increased popularity and prevalence of SSD has reduced interest. Also, you need to use Google to find anything on the forum. Here's an example search (note the prefix in bold text):

site:forum.notebookreview.com/alienware factory respawn -or- site:forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x factory respawn as a prefix to search only M18x threads, site:forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x for M17x only, etc., etc.

You can immediately remove the HDD (put it in the second HDD bay or connect it externally) and clone it to the SSD. You can expect a Windows installation for a HDD to have a performance hit if cloned to SSD because it is not properly optimized. For the best performance, you'll want to do a clean Windows installation to allow Windows to set things up correctly. Some folks care about the factory installed software, but honestly, there is nothing really worth caring about except AlienAutopsy, the webcam software and PowerDVD. Those can be downloaded at "My Dell Downloads" accessible through your account at Dell Support based on your Service Tag configuration. The CrapAfee antivirus and Roxio Starter software are pretty much garbage and the Alienware wallpapers are available for download here on the forums.

There is a way to recreate a "factory install" on SSD using the recovery partition and extracting content of compressed files on the recovery partition. See this... http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...t-restore-recovery-partition.html#post8210170 and this... Tutorial: make an up-to-date Alienware Respawn Image. Both discussions were either missed by the masses or people simply don't seem to care too much about a factory installation.

Every time I have tried this it has failed going from a RAID0 to a single drive, but it has worked for me going from single drive to RAID0. You'll have to try it and see if it works, but chances are better for you than if you were going from a factory RAID0 to a single SSD. If it fails, try cloning the two small (system and recovery) partitions from the factory HDD to the SSD RAID array, create a partition in the unallocated space that is left and retry using the Respawn disc.