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austinlamb
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January 7th, 2010 12:00
Alienware Aurora - Overclocking and RAID
I'm new to this forum, but I've seen lots of good information here and I'm looking for some help.
I just received my Alienware Aurora (i7 920 2.67 Ghz, 6 GB 1067 Ghz RAM, ATI Radeon 5870, 500GB HD) and this is my first experience with overclocking and such. The machine should have been overclocked to 3.2 Ghz (wasn't out of the box), but I've seen from some of the threads here how to do that and it doesn't appear difficult. The machine did come with A04 BIOS installed. Some of the comments in the threads though have me concerned.
My main purpose for the machine is HD Video Editing, and as such, I want to have an OS drive and a large drive dedicated to capture and storage of video. I bought with the idea of adding the video drive myself, and after reading about RAID, thought that a 3-drive RAID 5 configuration would be ideal for the video drive, providing speed and data recovery. I have 2 (looking for the third) 1.0 TB Seagate drives for this. Before I try this though, here are my concerns.
1. Some of the comments inidicate that Overclocking the CPU and configuring the drives for RAID could be a problem. Do I need to choose between the disk performance and the CPU performance? Also, did I make a mistake not getting the 1333 Ghz memory if I want to overclock the CPU?
2. Is the RAID configuration on the AW box hardware-based built into the motherboard? Or Software through Windows 7? Some things I have read make it sound like hardware is necessary for RAID 5, but the AW manual talks about it like it's just another option you can pick.
3. Checking the BIOS, it was disconcerting to see the RAID configuration seems to apply to SATA 1-6. It is possible to have a single OS drive and a separate RAID setup for the other, or can I only choose between RAID or indivudual drives? I don't want to try and configure for RAID only to have my OS drive pulled in, reformatted, and then cutting the usablity of the other drives in half!
4. On a slightly off-topic note, I bought the machine with the single optical drive for writing Blu-Ray/DVD/CD, but I was planning to add a DVD player I already own to the machine. The currently player is EIDE, and I thought the mATX motherboard supported EIDE, but I didn't see anything in the BIOS for it. It appears the optical drive(s) with the machine are also SATA. Can I connect an EIDE drive to this machine, or am I off to the store again?
If I can't have the RAID configuration separate from the OS drive, then I'll probably return the 1 TB drives and get a single larger drive and just back it up, but I want to research my options first (and before the 14 day return policies on my drives expire).
Del -
paulbodine
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Posted February 5th, 2010 17:00
Creation Procedure For Non-Boot Raid 1 on Alienware Aurora (set up through the hardware) > install HDs for the RAID (should be identical) > press F2 during startup > click on Integrated Services > change AHCI to Raid > click on Advanced BIOS, OptionROM Display Screen > enter > Display > F10 > reboot--when the Raid controller flashes during startup, click Ctrl-i > create Raid volume - name it, select Raid1/mirrored, select drives, volume size to max, create volume (ok to overwrite disks) > escape, reboot > start > rightclick Computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Management > right click the Raid at the bottom > select New Simple Volume... (ignore notice on the next screen) > follow the wizard, choose to format the disk > done!
im_lost
41 Posts
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Posted January 11th, 2010 16:00
in answer:
1. You do need to worry a little about cpu vs disk performance ut only if you go for RAID 5. If you go for RAID 5 there are significant processing overheads to work out the parity etc. If you have a good RAID controller card that processing is mainly done on the card, if not or if its done directly through the BIOS then the main CPU has to do most of the extra workload. I would guess that on the Aurora the RAID is all done through the BIOS and hence will use the main processor. RAID 0 or RAID 1 though have minimal overheads. Ref the memory speed, yes not getting the faster RAM has likely limited your overclocking capabilities.
2.I am not sure. However unless it is hardware based you will not be able to use a RAID 5 array to boot from. Saying that I have never ever seen a software solution for a RAID setup before and am not sure they even exist.
3. You should be able to have single drives working alongside RAID arrays. At least I never never seen a system that wont let you do that.
4. I just looked at the manual online and I see only SATA connectors on the motherboard with no EIDE. Shame as I have ordered a virtually identical system myself and also have a spare EIDE DVD I would like to put in it.
Things to bear in mind for RAID 5:
Even with a dedicated RAID controller card there is a large performance hit in writing data unless you cache the writes. Because of that you need a battery backup on your system to make sure cache data has time to be written if power is lost suddenly. It is very much a good idea to use identical drives (manafacturer, size, model etc) in the array.
Personally I would say just to use RAID 1 in your situation as you will not need massive speed but data integrity will likely be very important. Of course if you have cash to spare go for RAID 10 and get the best of both worlds. IE RAID 0 speed with RAID 1 redundancy. There are only 4 internal 3.5 inch slots in the Aurora though I think so that would mean you have to have your system on the same drive also.