5750 Help Please. Heat / Video Problems - RAID 0

Hi. I have an Alienware 5750 (M5700I-R2). Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.67 Mhz - 4GB RAM - ATI X1800 video card.

My system is running super HOT. At the moment, I have the cooling pad on, and it's running 66 C. I have seen it up near 90 C.

Today, my video card started to display random pixels, (Recently started doing this if I don't use a cooling pad) then the screen went all white. I shut it down immediately. Pulled the cover on the back, and used a optical digital temp censor and was getting 139 F by the video card area.

So, is there a way for me to get this thing to run cooler? Something I can do to force the fans on at all times?

OR... is my video card / thermal pads going out?

Ok, that's part I...

Part II

I am looking to setup RAID 0 on this system. Bought 2 matching WD 7200 320GB hard drives and the internal cable.

My question on this one...

I have the Install disk, and drivers disk for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Can I setup RAID 0 with this? Or will I need something like Windows 7 or 2003 server?

Thanks in advance.

- Pixel -

Got the raid 0 setup.

Did the long drive format. Figured I only wanted to do this once. =]

Was stuck at the raid utility screen for a few... didn't see the option for RAID 0... only RAID 1. After some reading realized that was the one to click to get to the option to change to RAID 0.

Used my install disk and did all the driver updates. The RAID setup took on the first try!

Did a benchmark earlier... Read time was 71.33... don't remember the write time but it wasn't much further behind. Was laughing... my Dell Inspiron got 39... Holy faster. Which is good to, since I'm now transferring back over my 100GB of music for DJing. It transfers a few songs a second. =]

Now... another question. I want to have a total of 3 partitions on this drive. 1 for general online use in windows, and another 1 specifically for the DJ software / Hardware interface along with my music. Then a 3rd for Ubuntu.

What's the best way for me to go about setting up the 2nd windows partition and getting the OS on there? Any links or help on this one? Ubuntu's partition tool on the install disk is easy enough for ubuntu... but not sure if I can use it for throwing an independent 2nd windows.

Thanks.

- Pixel -

Ok, here's how it went.

Had no problem getting RAID 0 setup with the new drives. RAID 0 64bit stripe. Was quite a bit faster than my normal benchmark... about 25mps than the single drive setup.

Only problem, is once I had it setup with windows, I went to partition and add Ubuntu on it. Now I understand this can't really work, since the 2 drives are being combined by windows, ubuntu could only install on 1 drive that it could see that held the windows os...

So ditched the RAID idea, and instead installed windows to 1 hard drive like normal. Put in my live cd for Ubuntu, and setup the other drive to have Ubuntu. Thankfully for whatever reason Grub loads... So I don't need to go to the BIOS to switch between them.

I did a complete backup of my Ubuntu before I did the RAID, so after both OS's were on there, one on each drive I restored the data on my Ubuntu side. Only problem was this broke the file link to grub. I'm fairly new at Ubuntu, so to fix this, I re installed it, and before I restored it again I copied the boot folder to a portable drive.... Did my restore, and used the grub file that the fresh install made to link to the correct hard drive.

Worked =]

So now I don't have the RAID, but I have 2 drives, independant of eachother. My Ubuntu side can still mount the Windows side so best of both worlds.

I can still setup my Final Scratch / Traktor on the windows side, along with the roughly 10k songs that I have for it, and when in my Ubuntu side, simply mount the Windows HD to play em.

So well, there you go.

RAID 0 was awesome, but this will work too. Yay me.

- Pixel -

Ooh... and I'm wondering if the x1900 video card might run cooler than the x1800? Anyone know?

Now to upgrade my T5500 1.6ghz processor to that gnarly T7600 2.3ghz. =]

Fun fun.

- Pixel -