Vostro 1700 (Inspiron 1720) in raid or software raid (vista)

Dell told me when i ordered my machine that the 2 drivers could work in RAID, i didn't really google it a bit more because i of course believed the Dell sales person.. (stupid me.. )

But now i don't see an option to get my 2 160GB drivers in a RAID-0, i don't see that option anywhere in the bios or am i missing something? Also when i query a bit more then it is the Inspirion 1721 (AMD) that can do RAID not the 1720 (and then i believe also the Vostro 1700).

If it can't be by hardware (intel chipset) can i do it in vista in software? I know i need a boot partition that isn't in RAID then, but if i make a boot partition of 30GB and then i make a RAID-0 setup over the 130GB that is over and 130GB of the second driver (pretty much throwing away the 30GB of the second driver or also create another partition for that..)
As far as i know Linux can do that, but can vista do that also?

 

you will have to reinstall vista to get raid. when the setup launches you will be given options for advanced setup where you can choose raid. you may (probably will) have to supply it with the raid drivers on dells website. then in the setup you will have the choice of raid 1 or raid 0. try that and let me know how it works for you.

 

but how do they do that then? How can you boot a stripped partition? Thats not possible without bios support.

 

but i just tried it a bit more and it seems i can get what i want anyway just in vista,

Make the 2 disks dynamic (i had to somehow install the latest intel drivers for this , because sector size problems or something like that)

Then the 1st hd i have 70G none partitioned space and the second one is completely empty. Then you can just ask to make a striped volume over the 70G and then it works fine.

I just hope i can still boot

 

Can you confirm that you actually made raid 0 or 1 work on your vostro 1700? I´m stuck here with two 32gb SSD discs in a vostro 1700....

 

yes it works fine you have to have a boot partition and the rest can then be stripped but for 2x 32GB you can have a problem with that i guess. Because the boot partition of Vista needs to be pretty big, then the stripped portion is pretty small. I guess this is only workable if you have 2x64GB (30GB boot, 30GB of none stripped data partition and 2x30GB as 60GB in stripped)

 

I´m actually going for a raid 0 setup - since these SSD´s are so stable - would give me 64gb in total, should be enough?

But how to set it up correct... I´m having a lot of problems with it- can you maybe help on that account?
Did you d/l and install any updates/firmware - I updated the bios to A06.
But still cant find or locate any SATA RAID menu in bios or found a way to install Vista.

Or are you doing it software-wise?

 

1720/1700 have the hardware capability to work in raid 0/1 but it's disabled so it can't compete with the m1730.

All it requires is a bios hex editor, the latest bios dumped and a tiny bit of hex understanding.

As I understand there is a way to do it through windows in the form of dynamic disks and software raid but this is slower than hardware and potentially has some big overheads during use.

 

well I have an editor - but zero knowledge on hex - besides that I can correct a 0 to a 1 and save.

What should I search for on google - any "golden words"? perhaps someone has done it before...

 

Hi there,

Has anyone managed to hack the Vostro 1700 BIOS to enable hardware RAID 0 or 1??

Thanks.

 

dont thin that is possible.
Its just not supported for that

But you can do software raid but then you need to split up your disk into 2 partitions each.

 

Any chance you could could give me a some clues with this? I'd love my dual disk 1720 to actually be able to do RAID as the order from DELL said it should!

Andy.