RAID HP ENVY M7-j078ca

[Marc-Millard]

Hello!

I have an HP ENVY M7-j078ca and with a 1TB HDD with windows 10. I just purchased two Samsung 850 ssd's 250GB each as well as an additional drive caddy to add a second drive to my computer. My goal is to configure the two ssd's into a striped array of RAID 0, effectively combining the two drives and increasing performance. I already switched my BIOS to legacy boot, I'm interested in where my next step lays. If there is a step by step walkthrough I'd be grateful for your help.

Marc

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Unless the BIOS in your laptop supports RAID, RAID is not going to work.  I haven't seen many HP consumer level laptops supporting RAID.

Boot into the BIOS and look at the SATA controller mode. Can it be set to RAID?  If no, then it's a no go for RAID.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @Marc-Millard :

There is an easy way to tell if your PC supports RAID.

Most HP consumer class notebooks do not have the option to change the default drive controller setting.

I can tell you that the drive controller in your model is either defaulted to AHCI or RAID.

Here is how you can determine that...

Go to the device manager.

If you see an IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers device manager category, click to expand that category.

If you see an Intel model so and so SATA AHCI Controller listed there, then the drive controller is defaulted to AHCI.

Look further down the device manager listing.  If you see a Storage Controllers device manager category, click to expand that category.

If you see an Intel model so and so SATA RAID controller, then your notebook supports RAID.

Here is why it is possible that the drive controller may be set to RAID.

There are some models in the M7 series that have hybrid drives (the ones with the SSD caches).

I don't know the technical reason why, but all of these models have the drive controllers set to RAID so that the hybrid drives work properly.

If you determine that the BIOS is set to RAID, then I imagine you can do what you want to do.

Here is some guidance on how to set up RAID on a HP mobile workstation.  I believe you can get the info you need from the below document, and apply it to your notebook as well (if it supports RAID).

As Dave wrote, most HP consumer notebooks would not have documentation/support for setting up RAID.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03577716