Steps Confirmation

Hey guys,
I just purchased the P 172X FX through a sales rep on gateways website. I unfortunately wont get it until may 19th but I want to make sure I understand a few things. Ive been reading on the forums that it is capable of raid formats. I could definitely use the speed associated with raid zero. So these are the steps that I think I understand I should follow. Please correct me if I am wrong.

1: Use gateways restore disc creator to save the drivers and such.
2: Reboot and get into the bios to set up the raid
3: Reboot again to install os
4: Use restore disc to restore drivers.


So some questions:
I have read that the manual has good instructions on raid. I have never done it before. Do you guys think it is pretty self explanatory?

I also plan to upgrade to vista 64 bit from the installed 32 bit system. If i install the 64 bit os, will the drivers I saved to the disk work?

Finally and perhaps most naively, I have never installed an operating system on a blank disk. After I set the disks to raid format, they will be blank. Is it as simple as having the install disk for vista 64 bit in the cd drive?

Thanks for any help and advice you guys could offer. This is my first laptop and I am quite excited!

 

You should confirm, is it hardware or software RAID as the latter has performance issues. From the little I have read and understand it is software and may not be worth using. Check and see so you know the issues. K-Tron is the one who brought my attention to this issue. I don't think any Intel mobile chipset supports hardware?

 

It is Hardware Raid.

 

I knew there were software and hardware raids but I did not know there were performance differences between the two. Good to know that what I have will be worth setting up.

Can anyone answer my questions though? I saw a new thread posted about running vista 64 on the P 172X so perhaps that one may not be answerable.

Ive learned a lot from reading these forums but certainly still have many questions!

 

You know its hardware raid when you do not need to load any drivers, and you set it up in the bios usually.

 

Thats what I have read so far in the forums.

flynnaz have you installed 64 bit vista on any of your machines?

 

Yes, my P-6080 came stock, and I installed it on my gaming rig, runs great

 

Well I think I have found the answers to my questions.

It seems that many of the drivers are different for 64 bit than for 32 bit so I will need to find those.

I also found a pretty thorough guide to installing operating systems from various starting points too.

 

Keep in mind that you can still run 32 bit software on a 64 bit OS, for example I am running 32 bit Steam and Firefox on my 64 bit vista

 

The only program I can't run in 64bit vista is system mech pro 7. No biggy.

 

That is also good news. I guess I really just need to locate those drivers for the 64 bit vista for my lappy since saving the drivers via the restore disk from the 32 bit and using those under the 64 bit system wont work right?

 

Some drivers are 32/64 bit, but most are one or the other. The gateway support site driver section shows next to the driver which one it is.

 

So are all the drivers I need on Gateway's site or will I need to go other places. I imagine the graphics card driver would be on nvidea's site for example

 

U have to use laptopvideo2go.com to get video card drivers.

 

Is there a list of necessary drivers somewhere? It may become obvious when I actually have the laptop, but I am trying to get all my questions answered before I get it so I can sit down, back things up, set up raid, and install vista 64

 

Until gateway puts the P-6080fx on their support site you will have a tuff time trying to install 64bit drivers. Call gateway and see if they will send you a driver/apps backup disk for a p-6080fx or a 64bit vista pfx disk.

 

I dont know if anyone was interested, but I talked to my gateway sales rep and he told me that once I had the machine I could just use the serial number on the computer and go through tech support to get the 64 bit drivers fairly quickly.

On another note, I was thinking about documenting my unboxing, raid setup, vista install, and ultimately a 3dmark for the P 172x fx. Is there any interest in such a thing here or has it already been done?

 

I just installed vista ultimate 64bit on my P-171x fx, and I noticed most of the drivers are 32/64, but that is good news. I can't find a 64bit fingerprint reader program, If you find one let me know, I have the driver installed, I just need a 64bit program for it, the one that comes with the lappy is not 64bit compatible.

 

I think reviews like this are always welcome and as I wait for my own 172X-FX to arrive, I don't think I've seen one done yet on the new model so I say go for it!