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T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 6:04 pm
by iamdmc
I did a search of the ThinkPad forums for RAID on a T400 or T500 (I have the T400) and I couldn't find anything conclusive. Has anyone tried it? I'm thinking of buying the Ultrabay Slim SATA adapter just to try this. The performance increase could be substantial! If not, I'll probably try to get a small but quick SSD for my OS and a 500GB 5400RPM drive for data in the Ultrabay.
Re: T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:31 pm
by wap32
Don't know why it shouldn't be possible. But keep in mind that you'll have to stick to software raid solutions, since the integrated controller doesn't support it (I think).
I have no idea how to do it in Windows, but in Linux it's pretty easy, and does indeed offer a substantial performance increase.
Re: T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:03 am
by iamdmc
Does anyone know how to do it in Windows? I'm thinking that 2x 320GB 7200RPM drives will do me well. I don't mind doing just a software RAID since I got this laptop for $550.
Re: T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:22 pm
by iamdmc
Still no solid answers
Any help?
Re: T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:58 pm
by Zender
I'm not sure how it's done in more recent versions of Windows, but provided that Microsoft didn't save that option only for Server versions, you should be able to (as I did on WinXP Pro) convert both drives to "dynamic" in Disk Management (where you can create/remove/format) partitions and then create RAID volume on multiple drives (it wasn't called RAID, but it was possible to guess it, something like "volume spanning multiple drives"). WinXP Pro offered RAID0 or RAID1 (striped or mirrored).
It's even possible to mount such drive in dual-booted linux (worked for me with RAID0).
As for the performance - it felt a little lacking, on three desktop SATA drives, which could do 100MB/s sequential read/write each, I got around 140MB/s, but I tested it just once with one program, so you probably should try it for yourself. It could do around 250MB/s sequential rw on linux, but that was direct drive read/write, no filesystem overhead. Also didn't test anything relating to seek time.
Re: T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:59 pm
by Zender
It was quite late when I posted the previous message.
Just want to add that I'm afraid it's not possible to boot Windows off this type of software RAID. Or at least it was not in XP.
Re: T400 (or T500) RAID?
Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:29 am
by iamdmc
No Boot?
So what do you do with it?