Dell Precision M4800- why is raid needed for two hard drive config?

I am planning to buy the Precision M4800 and i would like to have an additional hard drive but also need the DVD RW drive.

However when i spoke to the Dell representative the only option was to have RAID configuration and then add an optical bay drive without the DVD RW. They do not have the option to give the DVD RW drive and provide the optical bay drive as an accessory. This makes no sense.

My questions are -

1) Why do they force the RAID option when i just need another hard drive for backups and data storage?

2) If i do go for the RAID 1 option can i break the RAID and use the two drives separately (such as C:\ and D:\)?

3) They didn't give me an answer as to why they do not provide an optical drive bay separately. Are there any other options out there other than using an external hard drive? (I need the DVD RW drive as well though not necessarily at the same time if i was using the second media bay drive).

 

You should be able to pick up and add the second drive yourself. Either get one of these to replace the optical drive (2nd HDD /SSD Caddy, DELL M4800, M6800 [OBHD9-SATA-SATA-B] - $42.00 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks) or pick up an mSATA SSD. If you go the optical drive route, you can get an external caddy for the rare occasions you need the drive still.

As far as I know, there is no requirement to use RAiD.

 

Thanks for the reply and the link! That was very helpful!

It appears that i can just plug it in place of the dvd drive and i do not need a RAID card. Is that correct?

Any ideas why DELL forces RAID configuration when using two drives? I was also checking out the M4700 option thinking it does not force the use of RAID it does require a RAID card for two drives (The Dell Online Store: Build Your System)

Also if i do go for RAID option, do you know if i can break the RAID and use the two drives separately? I could not get any information on this either.

 

You don't need raid. When I got my computer, I switched from RAID to AHCI and installed Windows 8 on my SSD. Then I bought an optical drive caddy and stuck the hard drive in there and formatted it. So now I have two drives, one for the OS and apps, one for data.

When ordering it could be annoying. If you receive the drives in a raid0 or raid1 configuration and remove the raid, all of the data will be lost. If the computer is shipped with two drives in raid mode but not actually raided together, then you can just use it like you said, one drive for os and one for data.

 

Thanks for reconfirming no raid is required ! I am just going to go ahead with the DVD drive and will get the M4800 hard drive caddy separately!

Thank you both for your replies!