Extremely Fast W700 Drive Configuration "Cookbook"

[erik]

In addition I have one question about switching from a single HDD to RAID 0. If I install a second identical drive and change BIOS settings from AHCI to RAID 0, will the data on the former single drive be erased, or is it automatically expanded to the 2nd HDD without any data loss?

RAID 0 is destructive in both setup and recovery.   data cannot be migrated from a primary drive into a striped array.   and, the failure of either drive results in data loss on both drives, even if the non-failed drive is still healthy.

for those reasons, i don't recommend using RAID 0 in a production environment.   if you're in that much of a hurry, buy a fast SSD instead.

[proaudioguy]

For what it is worth, my idea of using the RAID 1 configuration to upgrade my drives is working out just fine.

I ordered my W700 with RAID 1 and a pair of 5,400 rpm 320GB drives. Lenovo delivered my machine with Fuji drives Lenovo P/N 42T1090.

I got a pair of Seagate ST932041AS drives from Zipzoomfly for about $185 for the pair.

After part way configuring my W700 with the Fuji drives, I removed one of the drives (in bay 1), swapped the caddy and rubber rails over to a Seagate drive and rebooted.

Then I had to go to the RAID Array BIOS and tell it to use the new drive in the RAID 1 Array. Then I booted to Windows Vista and the Intel software took over rebuilding the drive. It took about 3 hours.

Then I removed the remaining Fuji drive from bay 0, slipped the first Seagate drive that the RAID 1 configuration had just rebuilt into bay 0, put the caddy and rubber rails on the second Seagate drive, and rebooted. Again I had to go into the RAID array bios and tell it to use the new blank drive in the RAID array, then boot to to Windows. Now, two hours into the process, the second drive is 75% rebuilt.

This is really painless. I am happy. I think I will buy another pair of drive caddies and rubber rails and keep the 5,400 rpm drives to build backups periodically to keep off machine. This is faster and better as far as I can see than using GHOST or Acronis TrueImage.

Contrary to the W700 hardware maintenance manual, the two drives in the RAID 1 array do not need to be the same FRU number. My drives rebuilt even though the rpms were different and the manufacturers were different.

The Seagate drives have a slightly different connector than the Fuji and Hitachi drives I've used in the past. There is a third section of pins. These are missing on the Fuji and the Hitachi. I peeked inside the drive bays and saw that there is nothing in the bay to match up with these pins and nothing that physically conflicts with them.

I took a couple pictures and I'll try to post them later on my google site with a link.

What I haven't seen mentioned up to this point is that corrupted data form a bad drive will be copied to a good drive. If the drive corrupts data for a while before it fails your data is still lost. I have been told this for a few years since I started exploring the RAID concept for personal backups. DO I have bad info?

[tinkererguy]

It appears the best way to go, for those using SSDs drive(s) for boot and/or data, is AHCI mode, for these reasons:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... &p=3&cp=12

So until Intel comes out with a RAID driver that supports TRIM, it would appear AHCI with software RAID0 is best for now.

I got much better speed after flashing my Intel X-25M 80GB SSD fyi:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/20 ... -death.ars

Finally, got another 10-15% better drive reads/writes just by moving from Vista x64 to Windows 7 x64, nice!

[proaudioguy]

Can someone tell me what this all means, is it good or bad, and any other benchmarking tools you think I should try?


Large picture on link.....

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_iSIjwEu5gQQ/SwHXH ... chmark.jpg

[proaudioguy]

I disabled the RAID and set it to AHCI and reinstalled the system from the restore discs I made. Blue screen on every boot! I switched to Compatibility in the BIOS and it works fine. It's been fine for a few days now. I thought I'd try AHCI again, but it blue screened. It's so fast I don't have time to read the BSOD message. Any suggestions?

[deforest]

Download the Intel Storage Drivers

On that page, follow the instructions for windows clean install.

[proaudioguy]

Download the Intel Storage Drivers

On that page, follow the instructions for windows clean install.

Thanks, I have the 64bit OS. I found the corresponding driver. In the instructions it says to find one of the listed devices. Turns out I have none of them. I'm going to try to install the driver rather than update (as you suggested).

[proaudioguy]

Download the Intel Storage Drivers

On that page, follow the instructions for windows clean install.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 38#install

There doesn't seem to be any way to manually install this driver the way you can for the 32bit version. Any suggestions?

Here is the list of files I have in device manager.

IDE Channel
IDE Channel
IDE Channel
IDE Channel
Ricoh Memory Stick Controller
Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller
Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller