9262 and Raid options

I'm wondering if you buy an 9262 with the raid options turned off and then install a second drive, is that second drive just seen as a D:/ drive?

Ideally I think it would be better to have a small 7200 rpm C:/ drive with programs on it and a second slower but larger 5400 rpm D:/ drive for storage of media and documents.

 

Yes, if RAID is disabled, then each HDD will be detected individually by Windows.

Keep in mind that the Clevo D900C (Sager 926x) has up to 3 HDDs.

And a tip for system with multiple HDDs, you can get a significant performance boost of the system by setting the Page File to be on a different drive (rather than on the default C

 

Cool, thanks for the informative reply

 

DOes this apply in a raid 5 situation - is it possible?

 

The pagefile would not work as well in RAID-5... since it will be ran on the array of 3 HDDs... rather than on a separate drive (with a no RAID setup).

But you will not need it since RAID-5 is already giving better performance with redundancy.

 

is it possible to have 2 partitions in a raid 0 setup?

or more specifically asking... is it possible to run 2 operating systems, vista 32 and vista 64 in a raid 0 setup?

 

I have 3 HD's in my NP9262.

Two of them are running in raid-0.

I split the raid-0 partition into two even parts ( 200gb each )

I installed XP32 on one and Vista64 on the other.

My third drive is a non-raid just for simple storage.

I would imagine you could do any combination of OS'es you want, just partition it right during setup.

 

Ok cool, thanks Gophn.

 

Just so you guys know, I have a 3 HDD RAID0 setup on mine, and while I can put multiple partitions on this thing in windows just like any single drive system, so far no linux distro I have tried can see the RAID setup at all, not even with dmraid.

So at the moment, if you have the proper windows RAID drivers you can put any version of XP or vista in a multiboot, but don't expect linux to work on these laptop's RAID. (trying to install with destroy it)

 

I ordered a 9262 with only one 200GB HDD, but if I want to add two more HDD's at a later time to use with raid 5, is that possible to do myself?

 

I think there may be a switch of some sorts on the MB that you need to set before config of the raid options. Mine is coming pre-configged for Raid 5, and I will install the OS myself (Vista Ultimate 64bit), just have to hit f6 during set upo is hwat i was told to configure the raid.

-Coors916

 

I ordered mine with no raid options. It is very easy to configure the raid.

If you hit F2 and go into bios during bootup, you set your SATA controller to RAID mode.

After this, during boot up, you will see the option for going into the Raid Configuration setup.

Then you simply follow the step by step instructions.
IE. Choose what kind of raid and which drives to use.

---if you order it with a certain raid chosen, all of the above steps are done for you---

Windows recognizes it as one harddrive, so you just partition as you like and proceed with install, don't need special raid drivers or the f6.

*NOTE - if you are installing windows XP 32, you will need a USB floppy with SATA drivers on it, or slipstreamed drivers into an XP image using nlite ( or other software. )

 

Thanks Aryantes,

That is much simpler than what I had been briefly told. Please excuse my typing, it's been a very long day to say the least, lol.

I'm sure the info you posted will prove useful to many people as much as it has to me. Thanks again.

-Coors916

 

Thanks so much! That sounds like it's not that much trouble then. Now I'm just nervous about the hardware install of the HDD's, ha.