The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Alienware M14XR2 with SSD RAID0

    Discussion in 'Alienware 14 and M14x' started by pratyushpks, Apr 25, 2013.

  1. pratyushpks

    pratyushpks Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    3
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi,
    Before buying my M14xr2, I was wondering whether one can create RAID array in this laptop.
    I searched a lot of websites and found some piece of information, but all in all those were not enough to answer all my questions.

    I wanted a RAID disk setup in my forthcoming alienware and wanted to know what limit can I push this laptop upto.
    Here is what I did for getting a RAID setup and how:

    Initially the hardware setup which I received was    :
    Core i7 3610 QM
    6 GB RAM (4GB-Samsung + 2GB-Hynix)
    750 GB 7200RPM Seagate HDD
    nVidiaGTX650M 1 GB :rolleyes:


    The first thing I did was a trial and error method to see what sort of speeds does this laptop supports for SATA.

    I bought Corsair Neutron 120GB SSD (This only was the best available at that time-Poor India)
    This drive supports 525MB/s Read and 211MB/s Write and when I connected this to my laptop I started seeing difference in everything I do.
    Windows 7 booting in just 11 Seconds. :thumbsup:

    Then the time came for that ditched 750 GB HDD to be acted upon. I bought a DVD drive replacement caddy from ebay and placed my hard disk over there. Now I have ditched the DVD drive. But I do use it using mini SATA to USB3.0 cable.

    Still the ultimate goal was not achieved. The RAID setup !!!
    I looked for and bought an mSATA SSD of 120 GB capacity. This is Mushkin Atlas Deluxe with 555MB/s Read and 500MB/s Write speeds.
    I hooked this up in the laptop and was ready for initiating RAID :D

    I setup RAID using the RAID bios utility in the laptop which you can launch when you have 2 or more hard disks in the system and using kbd shortcut CTRL+ i
    I selected the stripe size of 128 KB and selected both of my SSD drives mSATA and Corsair Neutron.

    Below is the screenshot of what happened with the speed. Also I got write speed very less because of the culprit Corsair drive, and I am going to replace this one with Corsair Neutron GTX or Force GT.

    whatdaspeed.JPG

    Later when I checked with the hwinfo64 for the speeds being supported:

    hwinfo screen.JPG

    I found that unlike m17x and 18x, the M14xR2 has 1 SATA 3 6GB/s port where 2 devices can be attached , one mSATA and one regular SSD.
    The DVD drive port supports SATA2 3GB/s speed, and that is also fine for the 7200 RPM HDD for which SATA 2 is the Native interface.
     
    pratyushpks, Apr 25, 2013
    #1
  2. karthik ss

    karthik ss Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Arae baba !!! It's so high configuration that u have. Awesome that u raised it further :)
     
    karthik ss, May 1, 2013
    #2