Anyone try RAID using Laptop HD's?

[DX2Player]

 

[Falloutboy]

I'm sure it would work but most laptops drives i've seen max out at 5400RPM and most are slower if i rember right. prolly would get more performance out of a single 7200 8mb cache desktop drive, and prolly be cheaper megabyte for megabyte.

 

[ai42]

Toms Hardware did a RAID on notebook hard drives I saw quite a while ago (pre-5400rpm drives).

 

[MightyMan]

Well, it'd definitely be more expensive....but I think there was a Dell deal not too long ago for a decent sized 5400rpm drive with a 16M buffer.

But would space really be an issue if you're trying to run RAID?
MM

 

[Zap]

What would the point be in using laptop hard drives? I think the Tom's Hardware article was for making a reasonably fast yet quiet setup. You can do that just as well if you shop for the right drives, such as Seagate Barracuda IV/V series hard drives which are very quiet. Samsung drives are also quiet. I've heard that the newest 180GB IBM/Hitachi drives are quiet (maybe the smaller ones as well).

 

[vegetation]

While some laptop hard drives are on the quiet side, many are not. I've heard many 2.5" drives that are much louder than a comparable 3.5" setup.

 

[aircooled]

Originally posted by: vegetation
While some laptop hard drives are on the quiet side, many are not. I've heard many 2.5" drives that are much louder than a comparable 3.5" setup.

I agree. We have several Thinkpads at work particulary loud hard drives. A good modern 3.5 is much quieter.

 

[jschuk]

Where are you going to find a laptop with RAID built-in? Don't even think about using dynamic drives with W2K or XP, because the OS is setup to disable the striping feature when installed on a laptop.

 

[Shalmanese]

Originally posted by: jschuk
Where are you going to find a laptop with RAID built-in? Don't even think about using dynamic drives with W2K or XP, because the OS is setup to disable the striping feature when installed on a laptop.

how does the OS know it's on a laptop?

 

[yodayoda]

why don't you get a whisper quiet seagate hard drive and give me $300. it will be the same effect--it will cost you $400 and will have the same capacity and performance.

 

[jschuk]

how does the OS know it's on a laptop?

From what I remember reading, there are some laptops that the OS would not be able to determine as being a laptop. My guess is that it looks to the CPU. Both W2K and XP are able to tell you what processor family the CPU comes from, surely it could see that you are using a mobile chip. But there are a lot of laptops using desktop CPU's, Compaq comes to mind as do a lot generic laptops like Winbook, and recently many of the fast but cheap laptops are using desktop CPU's. Just looked it up, dynamic volumes, period, are not allowed on laptops. I did try this one time, and I could not convert my 2nd HDD to a dynamic volume.