Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Ok so to make a long story short my M18x R1 was a lemon so Alienware is replacing it with a much better equipped M18x R2.
The new laptop is coming with 2 500gb 7200rpm HD in RAID and a 32gb SSD msata caching.
My question is I have a OCZ Agility 3 120gb SSD that I want to drop into my M18x and use as the boot drive as it has a 3rd slot for another HD, but I recognize a couple complications/caveats with what I want to do.
1. The 3rd slot is a SATA 2 while the other 2 slots currently occupied by the 2 500gb hd are sata 3. So I want to move one of the 500gb drives to the sata 2 slot, is that a problem?
2. How do I adjust my bios to stop the RAID setting?
3. This is the one I'm least sure about, the 32gb caching drive, what if anything do I have to do? I am unfamiliar with this tech and how it will interfere now that I intend to use my SSD as the boot drive
Any insight would be helpful thanks, I can't wait to get this new beast of a laptop.
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As far as system stability, no. You're just looking at decreased performance from SATA II - if you even are able to notice the difference with a platter drive in the SATA II slot - as far as I'm aware.
There should be an option for RAID, AHCI, and IDE. You'll want AHCI mode. I'm not sure if your model is software RAID or hardware RAID, but if it's hardware RAID, then you should be able to set it up as AHCI or SATA mode within BIOS, instead of RAID.
With the SSD primary drive, I don't think the mSATA will give you much - if any - performance increase, but I've never really run across a setup like this, so I suppose I should leave any suggestions or opinions on that to others. -
Haha, yeah 4 storage drives in a laptop - no matter how beastly - is pretty rare. Again, as far as stability goes, there should be no issues. But performance? You've got me there.
Hard Drive Upgrade M18x Alienware
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by AndrewOu, Feb 14, 2013.
