My R2 arrived! WOO HOO!! Now a HDD question for the experts...

So yeah, I'm PSYCHED that my new R2 is here (note: I have a kick- R1 that I'll be posting for sale shortly)! It has some nice upgrades (Blu-ray, dual 680M SLI, newer processor, etc.), but I have a few questions about my HDD configuration:

Background:
My R2 came with two 500GB Seagate drives in RAID. Before I knew that the R2 supported three drives (!!), I bought a new Samsung 256GB SSD for my primary drive with the intention of taking my 750GB Seagate Momentus XT out of the R1 and using the 256GB SSD as my OS drive and the Momentus XT as my data (similar to what I did before.

Question 1:
Should I keep the RAID array and use it as my data drive(s) or swap them out for the Momentus XT? I'd lose 250GB by switching to the Momentus, which isn't a huge deal, but I'm thinking the RAID array would actually be faster in the long-run.

Question 2:
If I keep the RAID configuration and add the SSD, is there a specific something that needs to be set up in BIOS in order for it to work correctly?

Question 3:
Any recommendation on how to perform the clean install? I know I've seen something on this in the past, but I can't remember which forum it was in. EDIT: found it ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html) I assume this is still relevant...?

EDIT: I reinstalled everything onto my SSD (took a day to get all the games back on) and will start benchmarking. Do you want me to use FRAPS or would you prefer another option? Note that it'll be a bit before I can post stuff, as I have family things to do today.

Thanks!

 

i would image your setup to the 256 ssd and then run the raid setup as the data/backup partition. it's what i did when i had 3 drives in my m18x r1. worked very well.

as to clean installs..
1: install OS. if doing raid, make sure to have the raid or AHCI drivers handy for install.
2: it's better to have the whole software setup or software disk copied to an external hard drive. for faster installs. this goes for drivers as well.
3: in you don't have the latest service pack...make sure to have the stand lone already downloaded and ready to go.
4: first driver to install is the netcard...for updates

and that's the basics...

 

Thank you kindly, John! That's the direction I was leaning toward to begin with. +1 rep!

 

Running the raid would not be my recommend solution because your 3rd port is not sata3. Since you have only 2 sata3 ports you should put your ssd and xt in there.

Also instead of a clean install since there is no bloat ware, just do a factory restore to your ssd.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

Btw, I would recommend putting Windows 8 on the xt as dual boot. You'll love it imho.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

that's still fine since regular hard drives will never spin that fast...or at least not yet.
ssd on sata 3
hdd + hdd on sata 2 and 3.

 

Ohhhh...okay. Is it obvious which one's SATA 2? Is it the one that's separate from the other "bundle"?

 

I'm not sure that will work since you have to put the 7mm drive in the middle. Isn't that the sata2 port?

 

Congrats, Mike!

Do you have any new games? I was hoping someone would put up some benchmarks of BF3, Witcher 2 or similar titles that are demanding on the GPU. If you do post up some videos can you record the screen externally via an iPhone or similar (just use a box as the stand), instead of using FRAPS

Anyway, that's if you can be bothered. I know I'd rather just enjoy my new beast! Next week will be the slowest week ever

 

evil_mike...I see you have 16GB Corsair 1866 RAM...did you install that already? Did it work?

Most of us that have tried, had R2's that would not boot (or in my case, even stay turned on).

 

Thanks! Yes, I have loads of new games, including the ones you listed. I need to reinstall everything, then I'll start some benchmarks and stuff. I'm not one for overclocking or anything, so I'll be testing with stock clocks for now.

 

I actually left the ram at default and used bios to bump the default 6 gigs to 1866 and its working faster and never a bsod or any negatives...win score stayed at 7.8 tho even still....I did that cause the ram from newegg is 200 cheaper than ordering from dell configurator so i plan on buying the full shabang and installing...im prolly gonna hit the 2300 stuff since its handling 1867 so well...if you guys remember I had all those troubles with my first 5 m18's...they sent me the correct one this time with 680 and 3820 with sammy ssd 256 and took 1k off price for my troubles...wow right...list 3824USD to my house for 3038USD...very pleased however you guys I STILL HAVE THAT SAME PROBLEM WITH CPU AT MULTI OF 12 INSTEAD OF 27 AND I CANT CHANGE IT...It does ramp up but im hoping for a bios break that will allow me to OC

 

Huh, weird. Yeah, it booted just fine, once i realized that I actually had to, ya know, seat the RAM into the slots correctly (weird how it will just plain refuse to boot if one of the sticks is kinda sticking out )

That said, I didn't mess with any BIOS settings at all, so maybe it doesn't know it's 1866? *shrugs*

 

I've heard of Kingston HyperX and Corsair Vengeance but not the cross between those two

Could you check your memory speed in CPU-Z? If it's 933 or sth close while being dual channel then you know you've got the full 1866MHz running

 

Ha! Good catch Sponge. I was in a hurry

I'll check my memory and post.

 

RAM clocks attached

 

OK, so apparently, you didn't have Corsair RAM after all!! I understand the Kinsgton works fine, but the timings are slower than the Corsair. With that said, if the RAM doesn't even boot, it's moot!

 

Any gaming benchmarks?

 

Not yet. I'm working on it - had to reinstall everything b/c I added a SSD for my primary drive.

I will post my benchmarks here though. For example:

3DMark 11 Score: P10071
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,Alienware M18xR2 score: P10071 3DMarks

 

you could have just imaged everything...

 

I couldn't figure out how to copy the Respawn file onto the SSD, but it's all good. I finally got everything back up and running. Everything I've played (Crysis 2, BF3, Skyrim with loads of graphical enhancement mods) runs smooth as silk with all max settings.