Hi @luhwiz welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.
It is ok to max out Alienware Area-51m R2 storage capacity per slot. There is no improved performance using RAID 0 for solid-state drives. If one of the RAID 0 drives fails, both drives have to be replaced. Clone RAID 0 to a single M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe drive for your OS(C:).
Install a 2TB ultrafast M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe drive as your OS(C:), the vendor will provide free cloning software and instructions. Remember to also clone the original OS(C:) drive onto a 2TB NVMe standby as part of your disaster Recovery Plan, so if the OS(C:) drive becomes unrecoverable, the standby can be swapped in to get system up and running within minutes.
When Dell Support was published, it makes reference to the drives that it supports. Increasing storage capacity to 4TB per M.2 2280 slot is possible. Check with any NVMe mainstream vendor (Corsair) to see what they say is compatible with your system. There are usually two PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe variants, fast and ultrafast read/write speeds.
There is no benefit in getting a NVMe PCIe Gen4.0 x4 drive for this system, whose M.2 interface is for PCIe Gen3.0 x4 drives and will default to the slower NVMe read/write speed if installed in the Area-51m R2.
Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from another user. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.
crimsom
7 Technologist
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6.1K Posts
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April 6th, 2021 16:00
Hi @luhwiz welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.
It is ok to max out Alienware Area-51m R2 storage capacity per slot. There is no improved performance using RAID 0 for solid-state drives. If one of the RAID 0 drives fails, both drives have to be replaced. Clone RAID 0 to a single M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe drive for your OS(C:).
Install a 2TB ultrafast M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe drive as your OS(C:), the vendor will provide free cloning software and instructions. Remember to also clone the original OS(C:) drive onto a 2TB NVMe standby as part of your disaster Recovery Plan, so if the OS(C:) drive becomes unrecoverable, the standby can be swapped in to get system up and running within minutes.
When Dell Support was published, it makes reference to the drives that it supports. Increasing storage capacity to 4TB per M.2 2280 slot is possible. Check with any NVMe mainstream vendor (Corsair) to see what they say is compatible with your system. There are usually two PCIe Gen3.0 x4 NVMe variants, fast and ultrafast read/write speeds.
There is no benefit in getting a NVMe PCIe Gen4.0 x4 drive for this system, whose M.2 interface is for PCIe Gen3.0 x4 drives and will default to the slower NVMe read/write speed if installed in the Area-51m R2.
Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from another user. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.