*** Official Clevo x7200 and Sager NP7280 owners lounge ***

What is on C besides programs? My setup is C: - SSD and drive D: is made up of 2 - 750 GB drive in RAID 1. I have moved all of my Windows "User" data to the D:. I did this using a junction point and have had zero problems. If the SSD goes, I just reinstall my apps, redo the junction point and all is back to normal.

 

My C: is pretty much like your setup, almost exactly actually.

 

I posted this a couple days ago under the Hardware/Software thread but got no answers...just reviews. Figured I would chance it here since we all have/had the 7280.

Does anyone use a software to scan there laptops for driver updates. I keep getting a BSOD which states that I have a clock interrupt not received by secondary processor. When I Googled the error, one of the suggested solutions was to scan system for updated drivers as it may be hardware related.

Note: I recently re-installed Windows 7 Ultimate because my laptop would not upload Win 7 SP1. I have not updated any drivers since the reinstall nor have I done any since purchasing last December. I don't wont to install the wrong driver and be screwed even worse! My laptop system is listed in my signature.

 

I dont, I generally am not that trusting about updates. Even windows updates arent auto applied, I get notified there avaliable then I look at em. As for drivers, I use 2 sites:

This by a NBR member: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/574822-x7200-bios-drivers.html

And this: Intel® Driver Update Utility

Also windows update....just take a look before applying IMHO.

You also might try posting your error over at http://www.sevenforums.com/ , some pretty smart folks there

 

I'd also recommend running WhoCrashed if you haven't already. It'll give you more specific reasons for your BlueScreens than you've got. It may even be able narrow it down to the specific driver or application.

Resplendence Software - WhoCrashed, automatic crash dump analyzer

 

OK, I now know more about windows raid, dynamic disks and Intel RST Raid than I will ever need after doing about 3 days of reading up on the subject. I have now configured my system with, what I consider, to be the best solution for Speed and Data reliability.

I currently have 4, WD Scorpio Black's in my system configured thus:

C & D - 4X WD Scorpio Blacks in a raid10

Origionally, I had:

C: - SSD - 256GB Boot
D: - Raid5 - 3X WD Scorpio Blacks

I wanted to convert my boot disk + Raid5 to a Raid10, but did NOT want to reinstall everything, everything I read said, nope cant be done....

they were WRONG.

I did the conversion WITHOUT reinstalling anything, or loosing any data.

The Process:

1) Made a image of both C and D with Macrium Reflect , which I already owned.

2) Removed the SSD Boot Drive and installed a 4th WD Scorpio Black

3) In the Raid ROM, Created a Raid10 of 256GB, same size as the SSD I removed

4) Booted the Macrium Reflect Restore CD I created, and restored the SSD image to the 256GB Raid10 volume I created in step 3

5) Booted into Windows after the restore (which took about 5 mins to restore). Yes, there was my new "C" drive...booted with no issues

6) In the Intel RST program, created a NEW Raid10 volume "Data" with the remaining free space, approx 1.2TB

7) Still within windows, started macrium reflect and restored the Old Raid5 "D" drive to the new Raid10 "D". Restore took 30 mins

8) Rebooted after the resore

9) everthing came back exactly as before, I now have 2 Raid10 volumes, a C and a D.

Total process time, not including makeing the origional image or initialise....less than a hr.

Now, I dont have the benchmark speed of the SSD I had for booting, BUT IMHO its a worthwhile trade off. I now have both C & D drives on my Raid10, so I have good speed and they are both protected by raid10.

I also have if need be, the ability to restore JUST my C drive or JUST my D drive if I hose up one or the other, without doing a full install, this one was kinda a big deal to me, while I can restore JUST C in about 7 miniutes or JUST D in about 30, restoring BOTH is a 2 step process in macrium reflect that takes about 45mins. Yea I know, 7 mins, but hey, its 7 mins saved

My Macrium Reflect Images were stored on a external WD My Book Essential, USB 3.0

Now I know raid != backup, so for backups I use a two (or 3 depending on how you look at it) step process, automated.

I take weekly images of both C & D with Macrium reflect and store them on the WD External (on the link above) and keep 4 weeks worth, then nightly I backup all data files from C & D, my documents, VM's and my weekly images to a Windows Home Server v1 (WHS 2011 just sucks IMHO) with 10TB of storeage. Then weekly I do a diff backup of the Windows Home Server (select files, not everything) to a offsite storeage server.

I am probably done mucking arund with my raid/disks now, at least on THIS system. I am pretty much satasfied with this setup, Raid0 speed and raid1 data protection....

Screenies below. I will follow this up with some benchmarks soon as initialisation done.

 

OK, promised ya some benchmarks, here ya go.

 

Ditto on the same config. System drive is an SSD (see below) w/ Junction points to my Momentus XTs in RAID 1.

@wwoods - W/ out true hardware XOR support in the ICHR10 controller for the x7200, the parity bits must be computed. Not a problem w/ today's processors, but if you get into heavy, heavy I/O that could be a potential bottle neck with RAID-5.

So, if you go to 1+0, you do give up a drive's worth of space. Not sure that is a problem in your case. So it is a a trade-off of SSD (but slow down on RAID-5 w/ data) vs. RAID-0 portion (on the Scorps). Like rtrainer, I'm not too concerned about drive failure as all important data is just junctioned to the RAID mirror, and I still see crazy boot up speeds - just around 13 seconds after POST. I don't know what your new boot speeds will be, or if that is even important, so just roll with it and see how your work behavior along with the VMs behave under this configuration.

 

Very nice! That is a good bench on those drives wwoods.
_

 

Thanks, its not SSD speed, but I think I have a good balance there between speed and data protection with the Raid10

 

speed 4k poor, besides the construction of such an array is not justified economically, and it gets "re-invent the wheel" (in Russian), get a large stick, and bereft of aesthetics from a lack of drive.

 

I see.....well, thank you for your opinion, but, without knowing what I want the array for, you really cant say its not justified economically.

1st of all, what do you propose that would get better 4k numbers, while offering the same speed and protection ? NOte with a Raid10 Aray I can loose 2 drives and keep functioning (depending on the location of the 2nd drive). I am always looking for something to provie a equal ammount of speed and reliability.

2nd, the economic's behind it, I already owned all 4 WD Scorpio blacks, so I really spent nothing more. I did buy a 5th WD Scorpio as a replacement should any of them go out. My time is worth more than having my system down for replacement.

3rd, how does it re-invent the wheel, what wheel are you refering to ?

4th what does "get a large stick" mean ?

 

wwoods,

Did you have Crystal benches from the RAID 5 array? What did those numbers look like?

This probably doesn't help any, but I thought I would throw benches off of my SSD / RAID-1 if you wanted anything for comparison...

 

Ya know I dont, dident even think about makeing any I should have for comparison. I know with the Raid5 my C was a SSD so the numbers probably close to your C.

Overall, I am happy with this, I have both C / D protected and the performance is good enough.

 

and for what purpose you need an array?

I am not a supporter of raid, because raid is not justified in the ratio of monetary investment / performance. for more self-security, I believe it necessary to use a SSD drive, but for maximum performance, use of more like 512gb.
I suggest using the SSD with 128GB or 256GB or 512gb of memory and use 2 HDD Toshiba or Samsung to 1TB. this will lead to a more aesthetic view laptop and will not lead to dismantling CDRom.

I thought you intentionally bought 4 pieces WD Scorpio Black, but it turns out they were already present in you ......

is the Russian "catch-phrase"

I mean that, uniting in a raid, you get a Flash card, but only the large volume increase only linear speed and no more, when as much more important than speed when working with small files, where ssd drives are equal.

 

Kolich,

In regards to the "ratio of monetary investment / performance" - which will translate to "cost benefit analysis", your post may not add up.

If one was to use a 500+GB SSD along with two 1TB drives, they would probably spend around $1000 USD. However, 4 750GB Scorpio blacks would run around $440 USD. The SSD / 2 HDD costs about 250% the amount of 4 platter based HDDs. Quite a jump in price!

Now, I don't have performance numbers, as wwoods can provide that, but cost wise, but a single 256GB SSD would cost just about as much as the 4 HDDs. Unfortunately, you would end up with about 1/6 the amount of possible drive space on RAID 10.

I haven't figured anything for the intel Turbo memory. (I'm assuming that is what you may mean by "large stick.") Most reports / reviews say that having that feature does nothing for the end user experience, and is not worth the money.

 

I guess my justification for the array setup is thus:

In my setup ALL my disks being in a raid10 array, everything is protected from failure.

I know, if I was at home and a drive failed, I culd just pop it out and reapply the image I have, even if the boot drive failed I could pop it out, boot off a Macrium Reflect CD, and restore the boot image.

Now since I travel a bit for work, what if I was on the road and had no access to my images, hmmm....

Well I suppose I could store images on my D Drive, and if a non boot drive failed, I could always still boot, fire up Macrium and restore a image to a new and functioning drive (Yes, I do carry a spare).

So, the only Scenario I DONT have covered is, what if my BOOT drive fails....

In the setup I have, Raid10, I am protected from BOTH a boot drive failue and a D: drive failure. Assuming one fails, I just keep right on working, or open up my comnp, pop in my spare, and then keep right on working while the Raid10 rebuilds.

Studies have shown disk failure rate to be about +-%5 anually, and really enviromental or how "heavily" the disk is work has very little impact. Now +-5% is a REALLY small percentage, unless youre in that 5%, then it just sucks.

A Raid10 array of 4 disks lowers that to +- .25%, while each aditional disk adds a small percentage. I like tose odds a LOT better.

As for cost/benefit, that comes down to two things really, the actual cost of the disks in financial terms, and whats your time (or down time) worth. The first is a set number can be measured easy enough, the second, not so much, that one is more subjective.

That second can be PARTIALLY evaluated based upon a "salary", cost per hr or so if you wish, but there are many more intangibles that need to be taken into consideration.

Now, some may say I have WAY over thought the whole thing, maby. There are those on this forum that have followed my "trials" with various raid configurations and disks. I am not doing something the system was not desinged for, it obviousely has the capability, I am just useing the system in a way that most dont.

Its not just a gaming system to me, and its not all all about the best performance, if it was that I would raid0 SSD's (Yes the new Intel RST passes TRIM) and toss caution to the wind. I use the system daily for work, and at times gameing. So I needed to find what I consider a fair trade off between speed and data security, and I believe I have in Raid10.

And as for the aesthitics, the CDROM comes out with the removal of one screw and the caddy sits flush with system and looks just like a cdrom, except for the damm annoying blinking blue HD indicator light....

 

Why not?

I meant that "for example 512gb", but the use of 128GB I think it will be fully justified and effective in conjunction with two 1TB HDD on!

hmmm ...... Although this idea using Toorbo memory in conjunction with Raid 10, Woods try to test it with ur 4 Wd Scorpio Black, then I think it would be more expedient to use Raid 10 and possibly even better than using one ssd Good luck!

 

The cheapest 1TB hard drive at 7200RPM is a slight bit above $200 at newegg.

 

wwoods, do you have a source for this? I've been waiting for this.


Kolich,
Even with the 2 TB drives and a 128GB SSD, you're still at $600 to $650 USD. So the question is do you want performance (SSD) for $200+ more than 4 Scorpio Blacks, or the safety of data on a RAID volume. wwoods has more than answered that question in his own posts.

 

Let me find that article I was reading...

 

noooo, i mean a 5400prm HDD

Let see this Toshiba MK1059GSM - Hard drive - 1 TB 2xToshiba MK1059GSM = 89.95x2= 179.9 +
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120 GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (MKNSSDCR120GB-DX) 231.88
231.88 + 179.9= 411.78
I meant to use ssd to the system and games, and two storage hdd Toshiba.
The result is a cheaper and more advantageous to use two 1TB HDD for storage and for gaming and system use ssd.

 

Ahhh my friend you missed my point though. For one I would never use a 5400RPM drive for what I do, and your ideas, while might be good for a gamming system, but where do I put my 100+ gigs of VM's ? not on 5400 RPM drives.

Also your solution does not offer any data integrity/protection.

Botom line is, my setup does what I want and need.

 

Hello,
Sorry to jump here
Just want to clarify :
I see resellers offering sata 3 storages
But i think that the motherbord is only sata2

Can you confirm please

 

Yes this model is sata 2.
_

 

The SATA 3 drives will work with this machine, but they operate at the speeds of the SATA 2 since the SATA 3 is not available on these machines. Some like to get the SATA 3 drives now with the idea of migrating it to a future machine once they get one with SATA 3. If you don't plan on doing that, the SATA 2 drives would be the better choice.

 

@ Kolich - Sorry, you still need to count the SSD as well - $411.78 + $200 for SSD = 611.78. This costs more than a machine initially configured w/ $440 for 4 Scorpio Blacks.

This tangent of the thread has grown tiresome, so let's just move on.

 

omg.....i really missed this.....sry...

why need?dont nessesary count +1 ssd......

 

Now to find the best deal on 24G of RAM for this beast....

and what to do with the 12 I have to remove from this.....

 

What I used to do with extra memory...they should sale fairly fast

Computer Components
_

 

YEA BABY !!

Single 8G chips

Newegg.com - Patriot Signature 8GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model PSD38G13332S

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233216

and here cheaper

http://www.ramexperts.com/catalogse...R3+1333+Laptop+Memory+Model+CMSO8GX3M1A1333C9

 

^^^^The time has come! Thanks for the info on the SINGLE 8GB's.
_

 

NP, I am so all over em

How hard is replacement in these things ?

 

On this model all of the memory is under the keyboard, so a tad different...






_

 

OK, and I can get the repair manual with the steps to get to it from....

 

On the x7200 BIOS / Driver's page (see below), there is a link to the x7200 service manual (pg 2-18). It should have exactly what you need in PDF format.

 

Hello, im getting my 6970m CF replaced with 580m sli this monday -- Any user experienced working with these two GPUs? I saw over m18x peopke were talking about throttles once the card is at full load after a while? Actually this happenes for np7282 or not? ( i wasnt really happi with 6970m CF)!!

 

Thank you.....

 

Hey guys! What's the max stable OC' you can manage on the 990X?

 

@wwoods, sorry about not including the link to the complete service manual. I got pulled away...

ClevoX7200ServiceManual.pdf

_

 

NP will be ordering the mem in the next day or 2...

 

Who are you ordering from, Newegg or RamExperts? If RamExperts, I would be very interested in hearing your experience dealing with them, i.e. timely shipping, etc.

 

So, no one even tried OC'ing the CPU?

 

I believe DGDXGDG, wwoods, Torment78, and lawtq have all OC'ed x7200s. Patrck_744 may have as well. But I don't believe any of them has the i7-990X.

[EDIT] I take that back... According to his sig, wwoods has the 990X, but I don't recall how much overclocking he's done. Perhaps he'll post an update soon.

 

this guy oc 990x es to 4.52g......
http://www.zxtjd.com/thread-28619-1-1.html

 

Impressive. From the google translate I didn't understand how stable was that OC' and what was the temp?

What about your 980X?

 

I actually haven't OC'd my 990x. I am to paranoid to do it honestly since I use this for work.

Just placed my order with RamExperts after talking with them on the phone. They offer a Free first class USPS shipping but I opted for $8 ground UPS shiping, insurance and signature required.

Considerig they are located in Illinois, and I am only one state away, they said I was looking at 3 days max shipping so....

So maby will have it installed by Friday and will let ya all know how goes then.

Well, just a update, I got notice that they shipped already, have a UPS tracking number in hand, so in the way of speed of orderprocessing they get a "A" so far.

WOW...just got a UPS notification that the memory should be here tommarrow.....OK call me impressed so far

 

Aikimox i have OCed too this 990x, but he unstable, because, if tested in Prime95 or Linx and you have all right, then at the next reboot it is likely that tests will not what is the reason I even honestly do not know (((

 

@wwoods we look forward to hearing of your experience with the 24GB setup
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Will be nice to havre all my VM's running in memory and no swapping goin on

So the memory arived, the dis-assembly went easy, popped the new memory in with no issues.

Putting the keyboard ribbon back in was a total pain in the rear, the manual makes it sound like just remove the ribbon and put it back...yea sure ...no fun.

But fineally got it in, now running 24G memory.

I would say the experiance with RamExperts was good, shipping was fast, packaging of the memory was also good. They have my endorsement. Its really nice to run all my VM's in memory now, no swapping. I did have to increase the size om my page file, I currently have it split betwen 2 disks.