Msata caching drive is it now slowing down my boot time

[shankc]

Hi i bought an Alienware M17x R4 i7 3840Qm gtx67m with a 500gb 7200rpm 32gb caching drive which is raid 0.But now i have purchased an M4 512gb ssd i have installed windows 7 on it and i have moved the 500gb hdd to second harddrive slot.when i first bought my system the 32gb msata made my system startup in 35-40 seconds but as i said i have now installed a M4 ssd as my boot drive,i left the operating system on my 500gb hdd(just in-case i need to send it back to dell) and just partitioned what was left over after OS for storage and the caching drive is still boosting that drive.I'm just unsure if keeping the 32gb caching and 500gb second harddrive is affecting my Boot time.My system boots in 30 seconds but i have read on different forums that other people are getting 15-20 second boot times.Hence this is why i'm wondering if i might be better off removing the raid 0 as when i boot up it shows the raid 0 configuration screen.So am i better removing the raid 0 and just using the 32gb msata as storage along with second harddrive.Many thanks for your patients and any input would be greatly appreciated

 

[tactrdfreak]

I have the same model different gpu, but I am running the 1Tb RAID 0 HDD with the 64GB caching drive. Yes, my boot time is around 15 to 20 seconds in total. What I am not getting is the RAID screen at boot up. I am running Windows 8 and in reality, it boots into Windows 8 functional in about 10 seconds or so, but it continues to load other programs and drivers in the background. Are you running Windows 8 or windows 7 and why would you sacrifice the speed of the RAID 0 array for a single SSD. I'm running a 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD in my desktop with a 64 GB OCZ Vertex 3 setup as a caching drive, and that's along side an internal 2TB WD Black HDD. It boots in about 13 seconds into Windows 7, but I could get more speed from my hard drive if I ran a RAID 0 array. You need to remember that the 2 500Gb hdd setup in RAID 0 in your M17x R4 run at about 3GB/s if I remember correctly. So I would just use the SSD to run other programs that you want to read and write to at high speeds. When you add more hardware you will get longer boot times than what you did before. Thats just one mans opinion. I haven't done anything at all on mine except order some Vengeance memory for it, but I haven't even gotten it yet. I've been playing Crysis 3 in Ultra mode with no over-clocking on the GPU for about 1.5 hours tonight and no glitches whatsoever.

 

[AeonSoul]

Try to run some benchmarks on your SSD, my crucial m4 is set on AHCI, not RAID.

 

[shankc]

I'm running windows 7 I've got the windows upgrade advisor 1 step from purchasing windows 8 I have 2 day's to decide before it goes to full price,it's just I've heard so many bad stories about it,The boot time is the only good thing I've heard about it.I think I would rather buy the full version so if I don't like it I can just reinstall windows 7 and its 32gb msata and my 500gb 7200rpm that is in raid 0 and it will only be used for storage. I would run it in AHCI but I'm not sure how to put it back to raid if i need to. Is it as simple as changing in BIOS as I have no idea of using raid configurations but thank you for your help and more would be appreciated

 

[AeonSoul]

You can switch from RAID to AHCI and viceversa in the BIOS, but you have to make sure that you're not using an actual RAID array for that normal HDD.

 

[shankc]

well i have tried switching from raid to AHCI but i'm still getting a boot time of 37 seconds from pushing button until i'm connected to Internet.On both settings, i don't have a lot of things starting so i don't no whats going on and when i change to AHCI i loose my second harddrive i think i might have to do a fresh install unless that's about average for a crucial M4 512gb ssd so if anyone has the same system and ssd could you let me no your boot times it would be much appreciated as is the input i have already had thankyou

 

[AeonSoul]

I got a 256GB Crucial m4, boots up in about 20-25 seconds top.

 

[shankc]

Hi AeonSoul is that 20-25 seconds to where your able to use Internet just i get about 25 seconds and i'm on my home-screen but it takes another 10-15 seconds for Internet and other programs to load.If your getting to Internet use in 25 seconds i guess a fresh install is required many thanks for all input

 

[tactrdfreak]

I don't know what hardware you are all running in reality, but my desktop boots from power up to Win 7 Desktop in 20 seconds and I'm running an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. No raid on this one, just overclocked to 4.21 GHz and liquid cooled. I don't get a full welcome screen, it only shows a flash of it and hits the desktop and is ready to use immediately. There is no raid on my destop because I use it as a home server / web development system. RAID 0 is way for your computer to read both drives at the same time like they were one, in doing so, it allows for faster read/write times. Despite what you may have read, an SSD that claims 4-6 GB/s will only do so in RAID mode. Manufacturers list it this way because it is a true performance spec. You need to really read the full tech specifications of the product. You'll probably find that you're reading at the speed you're supposed to. As for Win 8 boot time, no, it boots to the desktop in about 5 - 10 seconds which is cool, but is still continuing to load for an addition 15-20. So in reality, you really don't gain anything, but it is a very nice and cool OS.

 

[AeonSoul]

Hi AeonSoul is that 20-25 seconds to where your able to use Internet just i get about 25 seconds and i'm on my home-screen but it takes another 10-15 seconds for Internet and other programs to load.If your getting to Internet use in 25 seconds i guess a fresh install is required many thanks for all input

Might take like 2 or 3 seconds more till I open Firefox, but in those 25 seconds everything loads up, for sure.