Gateway P-6831FX: Raid 0

I bought a Gateway P-6831FX and wanted to set up Raid 0. Has anyone done this yet and what drivers were required for Vista to get it going?

Thanks!

 

This is a quote from a user review of this notebook:

Intel's Matrix storage driver can tie these drives together in a variety of RAID configurations but the FX uses an Intel ICH8M SATA controller. If I am reading the Specs right, we need the ICH8ME for RAID support.

If true, there will be no RAID options. However, if there is an option you would have to get the drivers from Intel (search their site) and completely reinstall Vista. If you have the right controller, and if the BIOS of the notebook support RAID.

 

Your notebook supports it, I was one click away from installing it. You should really read up about it, matrix storage is a hybrid, it will allow you to run RAID 0 and RAID 1 at the same time, which has a lot of advantages. It's easy to set up, but should be well planned out first, ridgeburner has his set up. I installed a WD 250gb scorpio into the empty bay, the stock drive is pretty much a 250gb scorpio Id numbers are almost identical. Here is some good reading its old but pretty interesting http://techreport.com/articles.x/8059/1

 

There is no additional drivers needed. Like Snowsurfer said, I currently have RAID 0 set up on my machine.

You have to enter the BIOS and enable the RAID configuration. At that point it will ask you which RAID config you want to use.

Keep in mind that in order to do this you must either put two new hard drives in or one like you currently have and erase the partition on the current setup. So you will be starting from fresh. Make sure you backup all of your files that you do not want to lose.

If you look in the book that came with the PC it has some great instructions on how to set this up.

 

It is fairly straightforward to setup... The only thing that threw me off initially is that there is no raid option listed in the bios until you install a second drive.

If you want to install XP and dont have a usb floppy drive available, just download the f6 floppy driver from the intel website and use NLite to quickly add the driver and reburn the xp cd.

 

Excellent...I have two 7200 spin Hitachi drives coming from NewEgg. Should be here tomorrow but I won't be back from my trip till Friday. If anyone has any tests they want me to run on the stock drive and then rerun once I get it set up for Raid let me know (I also ordered a T9300 from another place and some DDR2 6400 mem from Newegg to verify that the faster mem won't make a difference if anyone wants tests from that as well.)

Thanks for the responses!

 

Where did you find the 9300? Did they have it in stock?

 

Hi, I saw that you can do raid with one of these laptops. Is it true?

And also...does anyone know what hard drive it has in? What brand and model?

Thanks

Shifty

 

If you can put two HDDs inside then you can do RAID.

 

This question about raid capability was already answered, just 8 threads down on the same page..
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=213703

As far as the hard drive, mine was a Western Digital, Sata 1.5, 250gb model.

 

Ok...so raid will work. I don't know what exact hard drive it has in since I havn't received mine yet, but will this hard drive work with the stock 250GB hard drive Gateway gives you?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152094

 

T9300 was from PriceGuideNetwork.com. Never heard of them before. They only answered the phone one time out of three that I tried calling them and took a day to respond to my email. That being said I received the T9300 today and it works like a champ. Paid $340.99. 3DSMarks went from 6980 to 8675 for me. I just set up the raid for the 7200 spin hds I got from Newegg and I'm updating windows. I'll pass more data once I get it.

 

I just setup my P-6831FX in raid running 2 hd's at 7200 rpm and I only scored 7000 on 3DMark. I'm running Vista SP1 x86, how come mine is so low compared to yours?

 

Hard drives have no effect AT ALL on the 3D Mark score. However, CPU does, and if i am reading right, his has been upgraded.

 

So just to be sure you did get raid working with the stock drive and the WD scorpio drive?

 

I did, no problems here. The stock drive is a WD scorpio drive.

 

I second that...the 250GB 5400RPM Scorpio works perfectly.

b

 

Ok thanks