changing the ssd's on my gx60

my gx60 has 750gb sata drive and + 128GB SSD's in super raid.

i want to change the ssd's cause i think they are busted.

is this as easy as just taking them out and replacing them or is it more complicated because of the raid??

also how much should i expect to pay for new 128 gb ssds??

thanks to anyone that can help

 

anyone?

 

I don't have that specific model, but hardware RAID all work the same.

After you have removed the drives, and replaced the new ones, you'll need to set up a new array in the bios. Intel controllers are normally CTRL+i while booting. You can maybe look for your specific shortcut. From here you will need to do a quick setup, and create a raid volume by selecting the two drives you wish to raid. Just follow the on screen prompts.

In short, its easy to do, plug in the new drives, and create a new raid array.

Hope this helps

 

cool thanks do you know how much a new pair would be and the best place to look???

 

so just to confirm id buy 2x 64 gb ones like these and just put them in the slots??

http://mydigitalssd.com/msata-ssd.php

 

or would just one of these be faster??

Toshiba 256GB mSATA Solid State Drive THNSNH256GMCT4PAGA - Scan.co.uk

 

There's a lot of debate over which is better. Generally speaking, however, raided SSDs only have a clear performance lead when you're looking at large continuous files - like if you were Frapsing or encoding video. Also, due to allocation size issues (this determines the absolutely smallest file size possible, generally set at 4kB), compounded with Raid, you can in fact lose quite a bit of space if you have many small files. Also, if either of the drives were to malfunction, the entirety of the information on your raid array is kaput (technically you can easily recover files less than the allocation size of your raid, but these same files are not accelerated by being in a raid).

In a worst case scenario your Raided SSDs will not be faster than than a single large drive. In the best case scenario you're doubling performance. In reality, if you're just doing general computing and gaming, you fall closer to the worst case scenario. If you're doing an obscene amount of RW requests (read queue depth) or dealing with large continuous files, then you fall into the best case scenario.

On the other hand, you can always install multiple drives separately. This has the advantage of isolating read/write requests from other processes, through strategically installing different programs to different drives. Another added benefit of not raiding, and only having a single SSD, is that you leave room for expansion.

With the advent of Intel RST caching, you can use your SSD in another way - boosting the speed of a mechanical drive. There are other implementations with this that go under the name of Hybrid drive (Seagate) or Fusion drive (...Mac). What this does is that your computer will duplicate data that your mechanical drive repeatedly accesses onto your SSD. Meaning that the files you use the most on a normal drive eventually becomes as fast as a native SSD. Caching does have limitations, one of them being that you cannot allocate more than 60GB from a SSD drive to cache, luckily you can assign whatever is left over to operate as a normal drive.

 

I would always choose a single larger capacity drive, you get good enough large file speeds and better small file speeds while leaving slots open.