Sony AR61ZU RAID Config

[Chuppet]

Hi folks,

Having caned a Vaio FS Series to death over the last 3 years I am now considering upgrading to an AR61ZU. Can anyone please shed any light on the RAID config options? Notably:

1. Do you chose RAID 0 or 1 when buying?

2. Do you chose RAID 0 or 1 during initial machine setup?

3. Can you chose a non RAID version.... eg 2 seperate 250Gb Drives?

Also any general advise, tips, views or criticisms of the AR series or the 61ZU would be greatly appreciated before I fork out all of that cash.

Alternatives being considered are Alienware m9750 or m15x, Toshiba Satellite X200, Dell XPS1730.

Your help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Richard.

[Blencogo]

Hi Richard and welcome.

The AR61ZU will come preconfigured in striped RAID 0 as this gives the best performance in read/write speeds and is by far the most popular with power users.

RAID 1 immediately halves the capacity of your drives by writing the same data to both discs and is generally rarely used these days - it is really a legacy of a time when Hard Discs were less reliable and external Backup more difficult and expensive.

I believe you will have to make your own recovery discs and carry out a full reinstall from the Recovery DVDs if you wish to change the RAID to RAID 1 or to remove RAID. This is because BOTH discs will need to be fully formatted to change from the STRIPED format to the MIRRORED or NORMAL format and ALL data on the drives will be lost during this process.

The AR61 is an excellent buy but I will leave any recommendations to members who actually own one. Just check the battery life suits your purposes as this model is really a desktop replacement.