m17x hard drives

I want to upgrade the existing hard drives in my m17x-r2 to two 500gb ones, but need some help!
Are they SATA or IDE? I think they are SATA but am not sure..
Is it worth getting 7200rpm's over 5400?
Is the cache really important when considering hard drive performance? I mean a 16mb cache will be quicker than an 8mb but is it worth it?

Where should I order from in the UK, I would be using ebuyer normally but want to see if there are any other more inexpensive sites.

I am looking to spend no more than £150 on this upgrade.

 

I would also be open to getting a 1tb disk and then just having a normal disk for regular if it's possible in this laptop.

 

for laptops one 1tb hard drive are not out. Dual 500gb hard drive in raid or dual 640 gb hard drive are out which bring out 1tb and 1.2tb But you have to be setup in a raid setup.

Problem between raid 0 is if one fails Most of your software fails. Becuse it Writen to both hard drives..

 

The 1TB Laptop drive is designed for laptops that can accomodate a 12.5mm height 2.5" drive. The M17x R2 I believe cannot. The 1TB HDD is 12.5mm in height and the only size the M17x will accept is the 9.5mm height. So the largest HDD you can fit in the M17xR2 is the 750GB Western Digital drive. Using two you can run 1.5TB in RAID 0.

As far as Cache, I don't have the details on it. 7200RPM does make a differance because the information can be read faster due to the faster moving platter.


Any 2.5" SATA laptop HDD will work. I would also check the market place of NBR for any possible deals.

 

Thanks and Thanks!

 

thing to remember is this. RPM is not everything. The platter on both hard drive the 500gb and 750gb are the same. Only the rpm are differnt. How fast can both access the info. Slower hard drive in rpm might be faster becuse it can access info faster becuse the info more compact.

How much info access per inch per hard drive. Is it more space or More RPM that control the speed of a hard drive.

 

its even worse. if a single drive fails in RAID 0, all data is lost. Why its important to make regular backups...

 

Disk density does make a differance so the new 5400RPMS won't be as slow as the old 5400RPM drives.

Not sure on the configuration of the 500GB, but the 750GB is dual 375GB platters.

 

RPM does actually make quite a significant difference; more so than disk density, at least with the differences being discussed (between 500GB and 750GB).

You don't HAVE to RAID them, but then you'd have two seperate 500GB hard drives, whereas striped RAID would put them into one 1GB drive. RAID also provides a performance boost in itself; as the data is read and written onto two drives at once, it's faster in both areas. However, as the others say, RAID 0 is not extremely reliable; if one drive fails, you lose ALL of your data, so backups onto an external HDD would be recommended.

 

ok, i was planning on raid0 so it would be 1tb in total despite if one gets lost everything goes.. All important stuff is backed up immediately by a special program so data loss isn't an issue. But should I keep them seperate? :S you've got me all worried now

 

And previously my laptop was in raid0, then I made a 60gb partition for the stuff that has to be encrypted by law, and it left raid0 and I ended up with 2 disks. Is there any way I can have that but still the remaning part of the disk as raid0 or something simmilar

 

well I use a separate USB hard drive, had my RAID 0 for nearly a year now, never experienced a single hard drive error or crash. You should be fine, especially since you back up your data.

 

Ok one last check, Hitachi TravelStar 500GB 2.5" Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM - Ebuyer
Will they be fine in the laptop?

 

Assuming its 9.5mm and not 12.5mm thick, yes it should fine.

 

Ok, how could I go about imaging the C:\ in my laptop, and then putting it onto the new two hard disks that are in raid 0? What software should I use to do this? Thanks to everyone

 

bump? anyone knows ?

 

Cant you add a second hard drive to these guys and NOT use Raid?

 

@will-insomnia - check out acronis.com

@FullSailDan - sure, the drives can be separate or raid0 or raid1

 

Also remember to check the watt usage from the ones in the machine to the ones you are thinking of upgrading to. A huge difference will effect the power brick, it will run hotter. Also, the motherboard, Will it handle the added wattages? These are things that service folks can be asked.

my thoughts.

 

I have the new Solid State 250gb hard drive and I think it's great. I love how fast the load times are and of course, No Noise. Granted it's smaller in size but the trade off works for me.

T

 

I usually get all my parts from Scan.co.uk: Leading supplier of Computer Hardware and Overclockers UK. They both provide fantastic after-service, any issues, a quick return and replace or refund, very efficient.