Dissapointed: Just received new Alienware 15: No raid 0 support?

That would have been Lord Zog, if I remember correctly.

 

Would you be able to flash it anyway with secure flash or has he found a way round it?

 

He hasn't told anybody his method, but what he has said is that A00 and A02 (and mostly like A01) use different BIOS versions from the same company, American Megatrends.
A00 uses Aptio V, but A02 (and probably A01) uses Aptio 4. They're different from the 2013 laptop's BIOS, which was InsydeH20. Lord Zog took advantage of the downgrade in the BIOS to unlock it. No one knows why the BIOS downgrade even happened.

 

So Alienware 15 supports Intel Smart Response caching? That might be the only thing preventing me from sending it back right now...

 

While it is good to have the option, most people wont notice the difference between a good SSD and two good SSDs in raid 0.

 

Talked to a rep today about returning my Alienware 15. Part of the conversation went something like this:

Him: "May I know the reason for wanting to return your laptop?"
Me: "Lack of features such as RAID and PCIe support."
Him: "I understand, however due to the size of the computer it is not intended to have those features, it's more for portability and gaming."

Nuff said.

 

Wow it would be nice to have raid 0 so i can bind the 4 m.2 drives i have together, i love the "however due to the size of the computer it is not intended to have those features, it's more for portability and gaming." brilliant!!

 

You can still use windows to combine volumes.

 

due to the size of the computer
What? Why had they raid functionality in Older AW models? This is nonsense. Mean really Dell a 15 "laptop is too small to use raid? What about the AW17R2?

 

Why not just create a software RAID array?

The only difference is that you won't be able to store windows on it, it'll have to be on a separate drive.

 

Because people want to just complain for the sake of being able to complain. "We shouldn't have to blah blah, dell should have included it" etc etc.

I'd only say they SHOULD have included it if it were advertised. But given the fact it wasn't listed with RAID and that people that bought it knew before it had no raid, I don't see how anyone can complain.

 

I will wait for Lordzog to throw his bios out and use that. Raid in these machines for me was more my lack of research beforehand, the assumption that it would just be a feature as it always has been, and a question to Dell that has not and probably will not be answered. If nothing materializes i might entertain and more half ass solution.

 

Well lets be honest. Intel RST isn't hardware RAID, it's firmware raid. Really its only benefit is that you can make firmware RAID drives bootable. They both use CPU power to perform calculations (though its a tiny amount due to how powerful modern CPUs are), in most cases software raid 0/1 will be faster than firmware and hardware raid.

The BIGGEST problem with firmware raid is that it's not transferable. So if you buy a new PC and want to transfer your hardrives over, software RAID will work, firmware RAID most likely will not transfer over.

 

Would love to read through all the arguments and bickering, but I'm not in the mood: Was there ever a resolution given by Alienware in response to this failure? Going to assume not.

 

Officially on Dell's website "we're going to pass it on to the engineers".

There's more developments in this but I can't share.

 

Perhaps Dells engineers also should have done something with fan profiles on the new and old AW models also. But they do nothing for this problem either ...

 

You see people complain about the fan noise. Then people complain about the fans not coming on early enough. So what does Dell do? Because half of you guys will complain they come on too early and make noise. then the other half complain they won't come early enough.

How do they win when half of this forum refuses to make their minds up?

 

Maybe consider integrating manual fan control in Alien Command center as most other laptop manufacturers have begun to do on their software. How many who have or have had problems with high heat on hardware I have no number of now. But there are many. How many who don't use the factory overclocking of the processors may also have something to say. Aw representatives are aware of the problem. They made a guide that should teach us to use Hwinfo64 so the fan cooled the processor better.
It will not be less noise if the fan anyway starts after the temperature has already gone down again.

 

My point is regardless what they do, people will be whining about it, so they're stuck with what they do.

 

What is worst; Half of the customers who might complaints about fan noise or half of owners complaining of problems with hardware due to the heat and want cooler hardware? Dell could completely avoided this problem by by adding a manual fan tuning in Alien Command Center. Several pc manufacturers have already create/use manual fan control in their own developed software... It had taken Dell max two days to develop such a software app in ACC, if they had wanted this. But they want obviously that we use third party software like Hwinfo instead.

 

No because people like you and the other people would just use it against them. "Oh I have to manually tweak the fans to get a profile that works" then "oh the fans come on way too soon and are too noisy." You guys just want something to complain about. If they fixed literally everything you'd still complain about "Dellianware".

 

We / I have always wanted a software that can control the fans exactly as we want .. In the same way that bios had all the necessary settings we could adjusted. Can guarantee that Dell had used less resources on hardware support with a manual fan control in the ACC...

 

A02 BIOS fan profile was sweet as, near silent machine. Could even game on lap using just battery with fan completely off 75% of the time.

 

FYI, I'm running A06 and it has a near-perfect fan profile (for me anyways). I game on my lap (I also have a Coolermaster U3 laptop cooling pad). It's not uncomfortable to say the least, and the cooling pad works so well that my internal fans only come on after about 20 minutes of hardcore gaming (Witcher3, Metal Gear Solid V TPP, etc.) When playing World of Warships or similar, my internal fans barely run - I sit at a stable 62°C all night long with this setup. I have the 240W PSU too FWIW.

 

Thought the OP and the rest of you that were looking for a RAID 0 configuration on your Alienware laptops should read this... I've been active over at the Microsoft forums, and found that there is a solution! The answer is: forget about basic disk RAID 0 in the BIOS (as Alienware most likely won't release a RAID-capable BIOS) and set your rig up with Dynamic Striped Volumes in Windows (7, 8, 8.1 or 10). The performance is nearly identical, and it does the same thing as RAID 0 through the BIOS, EXCEPT, if you network with any XP machines, they won't recognize the dynamic disks, as this wasn't an option in XP. See some of our discussion below.

HAPPY RAIDING!!!!

Excerpt from our thread:
I see little difference in performance, actually, between RAID 0 running on the striped, dynamic disks and UEFI RAID running on two basic disks, and the dynamic disks in some ways are to be preferred over basic disk formats. If you share a network with older versions of Windows (XP, etc.) then you might want to think about dynamic because the older OSes can't read the dynamic disks. But that's not a problem for most people...

Mine is on UEFI mode and set to AHCI as well but Alienware has not released a BIOS that supports RAID so we have to do it after the OS is installed then you can set it up after that. I hope they do come out with a BIOS update to support RAID but I don't think they will IMO.

Yes, even if you cannot do UEFI RAID to basic disks you will find that striping dynamic disks under Windows 10 will be almost as fast, and the dynamic disks come with other advantages over basic disks, too--so even if Alienware never supports RAID zero in your UEFI bios you can still stripe the disks and run RAID 0 on dynamic disks under Windows.
End excerpt.

To set up your dynamic striped volumes, it's in Disk Management. You should have 2 SSD's of the same type and size for it to set up painlessly. Just Google "how to set up dynamic striped volumes" in your version of Windows and you'll be up and running in RAID 0 in no time.

Cheers,
--Atomicbear

 

Not sure I understand how having firmware raid 0 equivalent help.

I have the original 750gb HD and 2x128GB SSD. From my reading dynamic striped volumes can't boot so can't have the OS on them. Am I missing something?

 

Your not missing anything Dell just did, I guess their engineers are absolutely useless

 

It seems to be possible to use the Intel Rapid Storage option.
Can anyone confirm?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/15-r2-2-x-samsung-sm951-in-raid-0.788468/#post-10207129