VGC RC204 vs RAID

[Goldo91]

Hello all, after 3 usages the hard drives hung and the machine went back to repair 1 month ago, diagnosed faulty HD, expect to receive it back tomorrow -(

It's the second time I have HD issues with VAIO desktops (got 3 of them, wonder why I did not buy something cheaper at the Chinese, but mayboe I am Sony addicted and my bro works there so)...

Question: I'd like to avoid that in the future, so I consider adding 2 more SATA WD 300Gbytes on top of the previous ones and put RAID5 over there. Anybody knows if the controller supports that and how to proceed ? Since Sony does not provide you with the install disks of XP I guess it will be tricky...

BTW, I'd like to know why I can't get upgrade to Vista for free... Ok I purchased that one in Agust 2006, but this means I paid more for it than late buyers, so I think Sony should make an effort. Especially considering that I purchased 3 machines over 3000 Euros over the past 4 years...

Thx for any help

Thierry

[Blencogo]

Hi Thierry and welcome to Club Vaio.

Adding hard drives is quite easy - the silver box with the illuminated 'VAIO' logo just clips off giving access to the drives and you have two spare bays where you can just plug in two new drives.

I have not done it, but installing RAID5 is meant to be reasonably easy - have a look at the INTEL MATRIX STORAGE MANAGER site as this is the system installed in your Vaio.

On the upgrade - I'm afraid Sony have to draw the line in the sand somewhere!

[Goldo91]

Thx mate,

I'll try that out, but first of course I have to get my VAIO back from DHL which seems to be as unefficient as the french official Post... Then I'll try to find the same HD than the original ones because that seems more reasonable for RAID usage and getting anything faster or bigger would not make much sense...

Do not worry, I know where the box is located, I've looked at it a lot when it hung booting on the WD troubleshooting CD-ROM -), and for sure I knew it was coming drom there because one of the drive did not respond and went making very loudy noises...

For the line in the sand, ok, but with the climate change etc maybe the line will be overflowed with water -)

Rgds

Thierry