Is the RAID in the Alienware 18 a hardware RAID?

I heard that hardware RAId is better as it alleviates the CPU from doing all the read/write opreations in a RAID setup so my question is, if one setups up the RAID array in BIOS, is that considered hardware RAID or software since it's not a dedicated RAID card?

 

anyone?

 

I think that is mostly a play on words, perhaps a hold-over based on old technology. Before RAID was common, you had to buy a piece of hardware to add RAID functionality (third party controller, typically PCI, but they had ISA RAID cards as well). There is a "Windows RAID" option that is entirely software based and managed by the OS. That is what I would call a software RAID.

The drive controllers are hardware (chipsets) that function through instructions provided by firmware and drivers. The fact that they don't rely on Windows to create drive memberships qualifies them as a hardware solution. You can use the Intel RST Windows utility or the Intel Option ROM (Ctrl+I at boot) to create the drive membership. You don't need a third party add-on card to qualify as hardware RAID. Some desktop boards include both a native drive controller and an add-on expansion chipset to provide more SATA ports and added functionality. The native and add-on drive controllers are both hardware.

 

interesting post in this thread:

and another interesting comment in this thread:

I don't know what to make of this now.......confused if I should keep my current single SSD setup or try RAId 0 again

 

None of it really matters too much, bro. The interwebs are full of so many opinions it will make your head spin like Linda Blair's did on the Exorcist. Many of the opinions are just retarded comments from people trying to look and sound important... like that "RAID in a notebook is just dumb" comment. They are often based on ignorance, assumptions and misconceptions, like "don't have room for the additional drives" which might be true sometimes, but not universally accurate. If we are talking about some consumer pile of junk like an Acer, HP or Lenovo with one 2.5" drive bay, that comment makes sense. If you are talking about an Alienware 18 with 4 SSDs (including mSATA and one in the optical bay) in RAID0, that opinion is clearly is not applicable.

The best approach is to take most of it with a grain of salt and just do whatever makes you the happiest with your computers. Experiment and find out, etc. If it works better and runs faster, keep it and enjoy the improvement. If it doesn't, then just go back to how you were doing it before. That's how I do it. I do learn a lot from the misinformation though. Sometimes I learn that I was right all along. Sometimes I learn that I was totally wrong and they were right. And, sometimes I find out everyone is right under a certain set of circumstances, but it depends on the circumstances which way is best method to skin the kitty.

 

Well from my previous 850 PRO 1TB Benchmarks, the below tells me I should RAID and ignore what they're saying.....





Note the 2nd benchmark is not RDx3 it's RDx2 it was a Typo

and in-case you were wondering.....yes I do play benchmarks

 

Yup, I agree with you. (I know that isn't a surprise.)

The numbers don't lie. It is faster. Whether you can actually feel the difference or not doesn't even matter. If you like it, and you can measure it, and you want to, there's no simply no reason not to.

I love RAID0 for lots of reasons. Improved performance is one reason. I'm not using it on my Clevo because I don't have a drive bay available for a fourth drive. (I would if I purchased one of their ODD bays to replace the DVD, but I am sick of spending money on computer stuff right now, LOL. I probably will later on.) I am running RAID0 on all 3 Alienware machines mainly because I like having one gigantic contiguous disk space for data. I'd do that even if it was not any faster, but I wouldn't do it if I noticed a decline in performance and it interfered with the quality of my experience.

 

I wouldn't recommend Raid 0 since it slows down the boot up and I never noticed any speed improvements during load screens.

But maybe my 1tb crucial 550m is just faster than two samsung 512gb in raid 0.

*edit*
Most important is to use your sata III ports.
It wouldn't make sense to use a raid 0 between your sata III and sata II port since you would bottleneck your system.

Unlike Mr. FOX I always make sure to NOT have just one single humongous partition.

I would recommend installing windows on your fastest drive (first sata III port) and keep a 90Gb partition reserved for it.
then maybe have the rest of the hard disk set up for files/data.
On your second sata III port you could install a second SSd and install all games to this drive.
I found that this set up yields the fastest loading times in games for me.

Keep in mind that raid will not speed up the drives response time, I think its mostly just ordinary read and write speeds that will be improved.

But whatever works for you is best, like Fox said you can always try something and change things if you are not satisfied. Thats the really nice thing about the Alienware, there are so many options tocustomize it.

 

My Steam and Origin game libraries alone are massive (over 2TB) but I don't use that volume for the OS. I keep all of my data on single partitioned RAID0 volumes (entire usable physical drive space versus partitioned drives) physically segregated from the OS and create separate full drive images of the OS and data volumes on external media.

My concept of ideal configuration for the M18xR2 is Windows 7 on a dual SSD RAID0 volume (SATA-3 6.0GB/s, Windows 8 on an mSATA (SATA-2 3.0GB/s, not in RAID0) and a data volume consistent of two 2TB (SATA-2 3.0GB/s) HDDs in RAID0. If the Alienware 18 were my primary machine it would be four 1TB SSD in RAID0 (no internal ODD) since all ports are SATA-3.

As long as the boot time is reasonable and not inordinately slow, I prefer the faster read/write performance after Windows has loaded more than boot time. 19 seconds is fast enough for me, but some people prefer a slightly shorter boot time. It's all a matter of personal preference.

 

all ports in the Alienware 18 are SATA III bro

I tried RAID 0 after having had tried my SanDisk Extreme PRO SSDs in a single drive setup and even though the benchmarks were higher in the sequential tests, the 4K speeds which matter to me the most took a hit of -2MB on the read and -5 MB on the write. Additionally, boot time increased from 3 seconds to 8 seconds and I could almost swear that I am using a system with an HDD rather than an SSD so I went back to a single drive setup

 

Hardware raid still exists and is faster than firmware raid (done through the bios but still powered by the CPU), software raid (done through software eg windows) is a little slower again and not bootable but it is hardware agnostic pretty much,