SSD mini-card in the L702x?

A standard solid state card won't work as a drive in the WWAN card slot, no - it's not designed for that.

Those may ultimately work, but expect that as with anything new - there may be teething problems, so it will likely wind up putting you on the bleeding edge of a grand experiment.

Thanks - but how about the long-awaited Samsung ones, having their own on-board SATA2 controller?

That's all not a good news - but thanks for the answers, anyway:)

While we're at it: could you please enlighten me on how to try and take advantage of the software RAID0 Windows 7 now offers, having just the two 7200 HDDs?

I understand it can be configured via the Computer->Storage Management Console, and should be pretty straight-forward when 2 (at least) identical disks are available; but how do I do it when the OS is already installed on one of the 2 drives?

I imagine it should be possible to create equal size partitions on each drive (leaving the C:\ as a boot drive with the OS), and striping them; I'd end up with 3 volumes (C:\, the striped volume, and the remaining space on the 2nd drive)... Is that right, or is there more to it? Like, for instance: is it possible to shrink the active, boot C: volume using just the Windows tools?

TIA,

Piotr

PS:  I've just found this Samsung product avialable on-line:

Mini SSD mSATA, Mini Pci-Express
P/N: MMDPE64GEDXP-MVB (D1)
Model: mSATA 64GB
Firmware: VBM72D1Q

The seller claims this is exactly what has been used in M4500/6500; is there a chance it would also work in the L702x?

Unless you are a very big gambler -- and at that, keep religiously current backups, DO NOT use Windows RAID.  Doing so is just asking for trouble - it's an inherently unreliable, unstable configuration that in no way offers much in the way of performance improvements -- while it DOES increase your chance of losing data by more than a factor of two.  And when a Windows RAID system goes down, it's all gone.

It's just not worth the risk.

I hope a future BIOS update will activate the RAID support which, from what I red, is supported by the chipset.

I don't think so, unfortunately - for purely marketing reasons (why create a poor man's Precision?)

As to the comments on the Windows RAID 0 being useless, well I'm not so sure...  Yes, it surely IS risky, but the performance gain I'd need to try myself...

SatanicSurfer - if you have time and patience, please do the rest of us a favor and try to configure one on your machine (before you fill it with valuable data), just to check the transfer speed increase (if any)....

Hi!

I received my L702X this morning with 2 HDD.  I thought RAID0 was supported, but I was more than deceived when I saw it was not!

Why Dell? Why on such a good machine?

I hope a future BIOS update will activate the RAID support which, from what I red, is supported by the chipset.

I agree with you, MoldCat, on the marketing point.  It's logic.  It's not the way I would like them to think, but it's the way it works in the world. What do you want?

I'll setup a stripped arrayfor sure.  I'll post the result pretty soon since I can't wait to switch laptop.  I think that if the gain worth it, I'll keep it like that...with a decent everyday backup of my data!

Just make sure the system is backed up on an external drive.  Windows RAID is inherently dangerous and you will one day turn the system on to a no-boot.

I tried to create a mirror volume after having create the striped one, but it's not possible.  I can only create a spanned volume.

Thanks for your time and effort, the results are worth them! Did you notice the CPU being taxed much in this configuration, during your  tests?

Please keep us informed in this thread how stable it is in everyday use.

Also, can you do all that (resizing partitions, etc.) all inside the Disk Management, without any extra tools?

Piotr

Hi all!

It's been around 3 weeks since I began to use my L702X with that partition setup:

[C: - Basic] - Windows
[D: - Stripped] - Programs, Users profiles (just mine, not all just in case that partition crashes)
[Z: - Stripped] - Swap file
[E: - Basic] - Data, that partition is at the end of the first drive
[Y: - Basic] - Backups, that partition is at the end of the second drive

I have total images of the system on Y: and on another HD and an automatic files sync over the network for the data (Allway Sync).
I should be up and running quickly if ever a HD crashes.

I created the volume structure with Windows Disk Management after having installed Windows on the first drive, on a basic volume leaving the remaining space unpartitioned.
Sorry, but I don't remember if I converted to 1st drive to a dynamic drive after having installed Windows or before with the use of another computer.


About performances, well it's hard to say that the system us quicker with program files on the stipped drive.  I was on a Athlon64 3200+ with 1Gb of RAM before going with the XPS so it's fast anyway.  The results I posted before are still standing so I guess it's really faster.
The CPU doesn't really suffer at all of the stripping tasks.  It's usage is at 5% max when copying files on the stipped volume.

I did a test with the encoding of a 1h27min movie at 720x480@4000kb/s mpeg which gives 2.55Gb in size.  I used Tmpgenc Xpress.

It took 10min47s from and to the stripped volume
It took 10min48s from and to a basic volume

I think that I can say that the CPU is not affected by the stripping tasks as I get the same encoding time.
I must say that Tmpgenc used CUDA so it may helps a bit to lower th CPU usage.  I retried without the use of CUDA and it took 11min5s with both file locations.

Overall, the system runs without any glitch and I'm happy it!