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Advice on HDD upgrade for XPS
I would appreciate your advice on how best (and easiest) to upgrade my XPS.
I currently have 2X 160 gig SATA HDDs run in Raid 1 (mirroring). As an avid gamer I am constantly struggling to make do with that 160 gig space.
I would like to upgrade to a 1TB HDD, a WD--the one that is on the Dell site-looks like a well-rated one according to user reviews.
Questions I have are:
1) Can I mix and match one of the 160 gig with the 1 TB (simply swap out one 160gig for 1TB drive)--or do the 2 drives have to be the exact same size for SATA to work?
2) Can I keep the array I have (SATA 2X160 gig) and simply add the big 1TB drive (add to SATA as aonther array?
3) what would you suggest I do?
Please excuse my ignorance on this as I am struggling to understand what will work and what likely won't...
Thanks for your help...
Bob
ejn63
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August 20th, 2009 05:00
1. Yes, but not in RAID configuration. If you do RAID 0 on a 160+1000, you get only 320G.
2. Yes, you can do that.
3. leave the 2X160s as is and add the terabyte drive as storage. Also use it to keep a backup image of the boot drives - RAID 0 is inherently fragile and easy to break.
RobertMiceli
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August 20th, 2009 18:00
ejn63,
Thanks and I really appreciate your comments/advice. I will do as you suggest in #3. Just add the terabyte as storage. I also will image the boot drive to the tera. I saw a discussion somewhere in these forums about what software to buy that is best for doing that.
Yes, I have found RAID 0 very unstable and I get occasional failures of one of the volumes and have to reconstruct it. I even had a double fail according to the bios, but was able to reconstruct--I don;t know how I did that---lol
Do you know what that is offhand or is there some other way to do it?
Thanks again!
Bob
jbltort
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October 5th, 2009 00:00
ejn63,
I also have a 1TB hdd that I want to add to my XPS 400 with a RAID 0 setup. The existing RAID 0 drives are located at the bottom of the case. Where can I install the new hdd? Btw, I want to install Windows 7 on the new hdd and dual boot the system. Do I need to purchase another SATA cable? I'm not a newbie, but it's been a few years since I built my last PC. Thanks.