M.2 drive upgrade for Alienware 17 R3

[lyusi_bg]

Ok sometime ago I got an Alienware 17 R3 laptop as a gift it came with 128gb m.2 drive = PM871 which is funny slow. I then purchased 850 evo 512GB m.2 because of financial reasons, and now I am ready to move to a proper fast SSD. From what I understand If I order the same laptop from dell with 1tb ssd it will come with 2x512gb pm951 in raid 0? so should I go that way or should I just get one Samsung 950 512gb? what will be the speed difference between 2 raid 0 Samsung pm951 and Samsung 950 pro? I don't really care about the capacity difference but keep in mind 2 pm951 are still cheaper then one 950 pro? any help will be greatly appreciated

 

[Meowland]

Hello,

From what I understand you are currently looking to buy a new laptop and you're wondering if you should get the SSD that Alienware will sell you with it.

In response: I would, if I were you, buy the new laptop with the generic hard drive and then immediately as it arrives on your door migrate the OS and all the install files to the Samsung 950 that you could buy from Amazon/Newegg. I would do this because the Samsung 950 is going to be a lot faster and better than the RAID 0. Also, RAID 0 is terriable because your basically splitting every other byte between the two SSD's and if one fails, then you're left with half of each file, or basically a bunch of 1's and 0's that don't mean anything. RAID 0 is notoriously unsafe for data and a huge risk for anything stored on it.

Anyways, Samsung makes migration software 'free' that you can use to move the OS and files from the generic hard drive to the Samsung 950. If you need help doing that just now Google is your friend and there are some really good guides for it, or at least better guides than what I can give.

If you have any other questions let me know!