Aurora....about 6 months old Question on Reinstall

I will recommend you to do the upgrade through the Dell sales department that way you will not have any problem with the replacement and the parts will carry on the system warranty. 

Is that a real recommendation based on warranty, or based on Dell?  Because their selection of SSDs is limited and their prices are all considerably higher than other places.  I mean....considerably higher.  

Adding drives does not void your warranty (as long as you don't break something yourself).

If you have an ALX model with no cables in front (and the rear back-plane) you probably should buy the Dell 2.5" SSD caddy. Install in one of the lowest number slots for full Sata-III/6-Gbs speed.

I suggest a Samsung SSD or one of these:

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19568143

Instead of RAID-1 3tb consider instead making second 3tb drive just another drive. Reserve it for full system drive partition image backups that happen nightly or weekly.  You would have a whole period hierarchy of backups of all drives.

Thank you for your post. 

I will look at different SSDs.  I have the ability to buy a 512MB 840 Pro for $235, which is a really good deal.

I will read through your documents you linked to, as well.

Well.....it was that price when I put it in my cart 3 days ago, since then it appears to have increased to 279 on Amazon. Maybe it was down for Black Friday.  It's still a decent price.