A few questions about upgrading to raid 0

I recently bought a p170em and am quickly realizing that my 120gb ssd is not going to be big enough. So I am considering buying a second intel 120gb ssd and set it up with my original in raid 0 to double my ssd space and increase speeds.

Would there be any problems with doing this?

Also, I would want to get a hard drive caddy to put my storage drive in since I never use my disk drive. Where can I buy the caddy for the p170em, or would any standard caddy fit?

Thanks

 

Unless you play an enormous amount of games, ~120GB should be enough for a standard number of games and programs.

Sorry not to answer your question exactly, but what makes you think it won't be enough? Are you not getting the 500GB secondary HDD for storing media/files?

 

I have all my documents and music saved on my second drive currently and I still only 25GB left. The problem is not necessarily the amount of games I have, but the size of them. I currently have installed: Starcraft 2(10GB), Portal 2(11GB), DCS A10(7GB), and a few other games. around 5GB each. I plan on getting fsx which I have seen that it can use 20-40GB depending on addons.

I have had this computer less than a month and have already used up 90GB. I know that I will want more space in the coming year as that I'm studying computer science in college and I'm sure I will be needing to install many programs for that.

 

The only issue is that you would lose TRIM support, which is the "garbage collection" of the SSD. It typically is not recommended, but there are some people that have gone ahead and done it anyways.

Any standard laptop hard drive caddy should work just fine, you can purchase them from any laptop reseller as well as some computer parts distributors.

 

Are you saying using raid 0 isn't recommended, or using TRIM on raid 0 isn't recommended?

 

Using RAID 0 is not recommended because you would lose the TRIM support in going to RAID 0.
Intel is supposed to be releasing IRST 11.0 or the 11.5 which should allow TRIM with RAID 0 but we have yet to see that, save for those that were adventurous enough to test it on the Alienware M18x, even though it was actually intended for the desktop http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/664114-intel-rapid-storage-technology-11-1-0-1006-ssd-raid0-trim-support.html

 

As much as it isn't recommended, I'm going to be going to a raid 0 ssd setup when I order my lappy towards the end of September. Even if TRIM isn't yet supported the increased speed will make a reinstall or reimage incredibly quick. My biggest question left is if I'm going to spring for a dual 128gb setup or jump to 256gb for the additional storage and speed.

 

without TRIM, over time the SSDs will definitely slow down significantly.

 

Yet plenty of people get around it. We aren't talking about permanent damage that can not be reversed.

In my research what I find is funny is that so many people that have it - love it, yet everyone that doesn't have it tells you to run for the hills and its not something you should do.

 

forum.notebookreview.com/solid-state-drives-ssds-flash-storage/631570-where-rst-11-5-a.html apparently by installing the 11.1 (desktop) update, trim support will be available for raid0

 

If this is going to be your main laptop for college then RAID 0 really shouldn't be recommended. If either drive fails for any reason all your data is lost. Drive failure rate increases in RAID arrays as well, which just doesn't seem like a good idea. Unless you had 3 drives and used RAID 5, I would not suggest such a setup for a college laptop. Not to mention... 2x256GB SSDs won't come cheaply...

 

Honestly, I think it would be better if you move offline games to your other HDD. I will only put online games on my SSD for faster loading.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but whether a game is on an SSD or an HDD doesn't affect performance (fps wise)

 

If I were to run out of SSD space, what would be the easiest way to re-install a game to my HDD? Could I just copy past the Folder in Program Files?

 

In regards to copying, it may work, but then again it may not. Some applications will store files in other places (%windir%\system32), make registry changes, etc. So it will depend on what app you're using and how it installs and modifies a system for use.

In regards to your OP regarding RAID-0 over SSD, If you run an internet search over this forum for "RAID SSD", you'll see all the advice for that configuration.

And I was going to respond to this with the same "be wary" advice - lack of TRIM, increasing likelihood of failure, etc. However, just today, tiller did the work for me with his post here - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...75262-dual-ssd-raid-0-config.html#post8680528