The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Opinions: RAID 0+0 in a M17x R4

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by widezu69, Sep 12, 2012.

  1. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

    Reputations:
    3,079
    Messages:
    4,207
    Likes Received:
    168
    Trophy Points:
    131
    As some of you may know, the M17x has 4+1(esata) SATA ports. The 2 main bays are SATA III but the mSATA port in the M17x R4 is only SATA II as is the SATA port to the optical drive. This means that those ports can only push around 260MB/s but when in RAID should be able to achieve over 500MB/s, similar speeds to SATA III.

    Which is why I propose a solution of utilizing the mSATA, ODD and both SATA III ports together in one FrankenRAID solution that I need some clarification with. Say I put a 128GB mSATA SSD in and then a 128GB SSD in the ODD with a caddy and create a 256GB RAID0 volume doubling the speeds achieving something similar to SATA III. Then I RAID that volume with two more 256GB SATA III SSDs creating one large 768GB volume with up to 3x500MB/s speeds.

    Here is an image for visual learners:
    [​IMG]

    What do you guys think? Is it doable?
     
    widezu69, Sep 12, 2012
    #1
  2. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

    Reputations:
    7,588
    Messages:
    10,023
    Likes Received:
    1,077
    Trophy Points:
    581
    It might work, but if i were in your shoes i'd actually try something like RAID 5 or RAID 10 actually. Both offer some form of data redundancy which i personally find interesting since the more drives you add, the higher the chance of failure. Not that that chance of failure is high to begin with, it remains rather low.

    I'm not sure your Frankenraid idea would be stable though.

    If you want to be sure, you could backup all of your data and then try it provided you already have all of the hardware, otherwise it would make for one rather prohibitively costly test.
     
    tijo, Sep 12, 2012
    #2
  3. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

    Reputations:
    3,079
    Messages:
    4,207
    Likes Received:
    168
    Trophy Points:
    131
    Yeah I would love to try some kind RAID that offers redundancy but I don't it exists in the bios. Worst comes to worst I'll revert back to classic RAID0 of the 2 main SSDs and possibly RAID the mSATA and ODD if possible.
     
    widezu69, Sep 13, 2012
    #3
  4. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

    Reputations:
    5,413
    Messages:
    10,711
    Likes Received:
    1,204
    Trophy Points:
    581
    In theory, that should work, but of course multiple RAID 0 arrays will have a performance drop due to the RAID controller now has to deal with 2 x RAID 0 arrays.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Sep 13, 2012
    #4
  5. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

    Reputations:
    21,580
    Messages:
    35,370
    Likes Received:
    9,877
    Trophy Points:
    931
    RAID with SSD's is somewhat pointless to be honest. And there will be enough overhead with a dual RAID 0 that it will likelly not gain much in performance. Plus any gains you get will likely be with large files not with regular daily use.
     
    HTWingNut, Sep 13, 2012
    #5
  6. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

    Reputations:
    3,079
    Messages:
    4,207
    Likes Received:
    168
    Trophy Points:
    131
    I know. I plan to RAID my two primaries in the long term but wanted to see what can be done.
     
    widezu69, Sep 13, 2012
    #6