Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

RAID 1 is mirroring, which doesn't increase the read speed. Read speed is about the same as with a single drive.

If you want increased read speeds, you can use RAID 0 instead (striping). I wouldn't recommend this, because if one drive fails all data is lost.

I also plan on upgrading the M6700 with a Crucial M4 256GB mSATA drive. I'll be using it as a boot drive, which is significantly faster than booting and starting applications from an HDD. The HDD will be used in a RAID 1 setup for data storage.

 

Theoretically mirrored RAID 1 should be able to be as fast as RAID 0, if data is being read by the system as if it was striped.

I've been able to find a post on another forum which contains a benchmark with Windows 7 on RAID 1, and those drives individually, which shows that the writing speeds are about 1.5x slower, and the read times are 1.5x faster:
Does RAID 1 actually increase read speed? - NAS-RAID-Technologies - Storage (post of May 11th, 2011 - at the bottom of the page)

 

You are absolutely right.

Intel Rapid Storage Technology uses load balancing with RAID 1, which means that reads are performed in a similar fashion as is done with RAID 0. Since the two disks in a RAID 1 setup contain identical data, the RAID controller can request data from the original disk and simultaneously request other data from the mirrored disk. This could theoretically double the read speed, as is the case with RAID 0.

The Intel Rapid Storage Technology currently doesn't implement a 'smart' write algorithm, i.e. write data to the original disk first and synch to the mirrored disk when there's no disk activity. Instead, data is written to the original disk first and then immediately to the mirrored disk. Therefore, RAID 1 write speeds are lower than those of RAID 0, where data needs to be written to one disk only.

 

First of all I would like to thank bokeh for this incredibly detailed review.

I am planning on buying a m6700 however the ram and sdd options are too expensive to buy directly from Dell. Therefore I was planning on buying an ssd and ram separately. The ideal solution would be 32gb of ram especially because it is so cheap. I was wondering though how hard it is to reach the ram slots below the keyboard.

Furthermore I was wondering what the quality of the normal 1080p tn panel is like. The quality of it on an elitebook is horrible.

Finally I was wondering whether the keyboard and trackpad are any good.

 

See my reply in the M6700 Owners Thread.

 

That's hyperbole, right?

That's always been such a strange question since its like asking is this particular mattress any good? That depends on if you like one that's hard, medium, or soft? Too many varieties of tastes to say good or bad.

A better general overall descriptor would be firm or soft; and whether it has any amount of flex? Although an analysis of keyboards can become pretty complex. Any flex is bad, but a small amount is tolerable. The case in most portable keyboards.

 

Personally, I would say HP should have better trackpad/poinstick since they use synaptic compare to dell own "alps". Dell point stick is known to be the wrost in the 3-4 brands that offer them.

 

I did the same thing, I only bought RAM, 16Gb 1866Mhz. I did not wanted to install everything again on a SSD with all the drivers.

Here are the official instructions on how to take your M6700 apart!
Documentation

I also youtube M6600 memory removal. There is 2 slot under the keyboard, it was a pain, since they are stack one over the other one, I had a real hard time to install them. The first ram was fine but the second one did not want to clip.
So I decided to install on the back of the laptop. Much easier, 2 screws to remove and you have complete access.

I have the Adobe IPS screen and it's really bright compare to all other laptops.

the track pad is really good! I like it a lot! You can scroll with 2 finger like a Mac. (not has good has a Mac )
The keyboard is shift the the left (because of the num pad) but that did not bother at all, I can type as fast has my other Latitude D830.

 

I have the same problem!! It p*** me off! I contacted DELL and told me that a BIOS update could fix it one day... I posted about my problems here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ision-m6700-owners-review-58.html#post8942948


I am on A06
Dell M6700 | i7-3940XM | 16GB DDR3 1866Mhz | 256GB SSD | 750GB HDD | Quadro K4000M | IPS

if you find a fix, tell me

 

Will do, overall great laptop, this one is our test until My 3940XM one is coming in this week. Now trying to decide the HDD options (2x512gb SSD or 256gb Msata SSD and 2x750gb 7200rpm drives in Raid 0)