Alienware Notebooks First to Feature RAID 0 Config for Solid-State Drives

With their lack of moving parts and ability to access data quicker than a traditional platter-based hard drive, solid-state drives are definitely the future for laptop storage, even if their limited capacity and high price have relegated them to luxury status in today's notebooks. That hasn't kept more and more vendors from offering SSDs as an option on select mobile systems, with Alienware becoming the latest manufacturers to offer the drives for its Area-51 m5550, Area-51 m9750, and Aurora m9700 notebook models. While offering a 32GB solid-state notebook drive isn't anything out of the ordinary, Alienware is also offering a mixed drive config of the 32GB SSD along with a conventional 200GB hard drive. Better still, the company is launching the first RAID 0 array consisting of two 32GB solid-state drives, which should improve drive performance even more. Of course, adding a SSD or two will boost the price of your new Alienware notebook considerably—one 32GB solid-state drive is a $500 option, while the SSD-plus-hard-drive combo costs $620, and the two SSDs in the RAID 0 config will pile on $920 to the system price. Note that the Area-51 m5550, the lowest priced Alienware notebook model, only offers the 32GB solid state alone. Alienware has already updated its Web site to offer the SSD option to buyers.