DELL Vostro 460 and RAID

I had to order three new DELL Vostro 460 desktops for a business customer. To upgrade the basic configuration from 2Gb to 4Gb of DDR3 memory costs £60 plus VAT and to add an extra 320Gb hard disk drive to each costs £120 plus VAT. I decided to buy the extra bits myself at £18 per 2Gb stick of Crucial memory and Samsung 320Gb HDD for £30 each. In total for three systems saving myself over £500. Now the difficult bit, fitting the extras and reconfiguring to RAID 1 Mirror.

Adding the RAM was relatively easy of course, but fitting each extra hard disk drive less so. DELL mounts their hard drive in proprietary rails which they don't sell separately. However, you can screw the extra disk into to space for the optional optical disk drive. There is a 3-1/2" bay available but the SATA power lead won't stretch that far. And I don't think that business customers are going to upgrade to Blu-Ray drives that soon.

Then press F2 to go into BIOS and set the SATA device controller option to RAID. Save and install Windows. When complete, start the Intel Rapid Storage Manager and select protect your data by creating a volume. Wait a couple of hours and you have data protection at the desktop level for minimum outlay and trouble. Magic!