What happens when I add an SSD to a GT70 Super Raid Card?

I just got a GT70-492us which has a 128GB SSD Super Raid setup in the top left HD bay. The thing is, it only has 1 128GB SSD in the super raid card, not 2x64GB. What happens if I put a second drive in the open slot? Does it expand the size of the already installed drive? Does it see it as another drive? Would the system need to be reinstalled? Is there some setup that has to happen in the bios?

 

Treat each card like you would a 2.5" normal HDD/SSD, they work exactly the same way.

 

Trial and error.

While I don't have a lot of experience with RAID setups, you shouldn't need to re-install the OS. You will need to configure it in BIOS - either as a RAID set up, IDE, or SATA/AHCI. As for how it's seen by the OS, that will depend on the configuration in BIOS, I believe.

 

My preference is to have it see it as one larger drive. 128GB is a little small for how much I want to run off the ssd. I'll put a second drive in the other spot, set it as RAID in the bios and see if it boots up with the added space. Setting it as RAID is what will "merge" the two drives as one, correct? I just don't know if I will need to re-format or not with the added drive.

 

There's a few options available to you.

If you want the 2 mSATA SSDs in the adapter to be individuale SATA drives with an OS on each then install the OS on the new mSATA with the original mSATA SSD and all other drives removed.

If you desire to create a raid0 array it's best to use 2 mSATA SSDs of the same brand,SATA generation and capacity although a different band with the same capacity and generation will also work.Two different capacities is not desirable.A mix of SATA II and SATA III will perform as SATA II.

There's Muskin Atlas 480GB mSATA SSDs coming in January.

When the bios is changed from AHCI to Raid a Windows installation created on AHCI will no longer boot once the bios has been rset to Raid.

With 2 480GB mSATA SSDs in the adapter,a 1 TB hard drive in the secondary bay and another 1 TB hard drive in the optical bay you can have an awesome amount of storage space.

 

I found a crucial mSATA drive that's 256GB. I will install the system on that with the other drives removed and then add them back in later. That will give me a 256 SSD for my system, a 128 SSD and the 750 mechanical drive which will be more than enough space. But with this set up, I won't need to change anything in the BIOS once I go to install the system on the new 256 SSD, correct? Afterwards, I will have to be sure that the boot priority is set for the new 256 drive and then I can reformat the original 128 gig drive from windows.

 

If the Bios is set to AHCI leave it at that.

Anytime a drive is added or removed go into the bios and check the boot order.

Most of the time adding/removing a drive resets the boot order to the Bigfoot Lan on top.

After Windows is installed on the new mSATA SSD and you've installed the Intel Chipset Installation Software,drivers and MSI utilities run Windows Experience Index,aka WEI,to optimize Windows for the SSD.

 

Recovery disks were the first thing that I did when I turned the computer on so that's what I plan to use to reinstall the system. will that include all of the things that you listed (other than the WEI optimizing?

 

To be honest I would download an ISO for windows 8, install it in UEFI mode and do a clean install.

 

I agree with Meaker.

A clean install is always best.

Download an ISO from the link below after you enter your serial key and unpack it onto a USB flash drive that's at least 4Gb using the Microsoft USB/DVD Tool

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=262204