Possible HDD upgrades on Alienware notebooks...m15x & m17x?

Dell and Alienware First to Ship Notebooks with 320GB, 7200 rpm Drives
Seagate Technology today announced that its Momentus 7200.3 hard drive, the industry's first 2.5-inch 7200-rpm, 320GB HDD, now powers Dell XPS laptop PCs and will be available soon in select Alienware laptops - making the leading computer manufacturers first to market with systems featuring high-performance 320GB hard drives. Perfect for performance laptops, workstations and small form factor desktop PCs, the Momentus 7200.3 Serial ATA 3.0 HDD features doubled 16MB cache and a free-fall sensor technology, to help prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The hard drive is also lean on power consumption, allowing notebook users to work longer between battery charges, and are virtually inaudible thanks to Seagate's innovative SoftSonic fluid-dynamic bearing motors and QuietStep ramp load technology. Both Dell and Alienware will update their websites soon to include the new storage option on selected XPS and Alienware notebooks.

thought this might be useful info for people thinking of ordering...

Just my 2p...

OB

 

I still would like to see the WD velociraptor make it into a notebook. Bye bye battery life but it would be one screaming system.

 

Good idea, they could then advertise the machine a ustilising UPS technology... oh, and a large warning sticker "The use of the notebook battery (ups device) is not recommended for more than 30 seconds" lol

It would be a beast but, not very mobile, unless you can get an Alienware tech case... (small suitcase) to hold it and transport it around...

OB

 

In regretting my 200GB drive's small capacity, I went out and picked up a WD external 1TB drive today

edit: should mention the glossy black finish of the drive matches perfectly with the m15x's screen

 

I wonder if there's a way to modify the smart-bay casing to allow for water cooling pipework to be added?

If you could do that you could run the velociraptor without it's heat-sink, assuming it would fit into the chassis afterwards?

Another alternative is to make the adapter cable that connects the HDD to the notebook on the smart-bay, make it longer and have a velociraptor with heat-sink in a stand with a cooling fan if needed. It would mean that he smart-bay became a cable tray really, but you could use the faster drive for storage without the risk of overheating...

Just a thought (",)

OB

P.S. I wonder if you could daisy-chain more than one together and still have the notebook read them (Raid 0 style)... hmmm!

 

Firstly water cooling - get a leak and your lappie is f**ked,
Assuming this is 'mobile' liquid cooling right? would need to make an external radiator - on an already eleven pound laptop? I suppose they could market it as gym replacement (carry this and work out on the way to work hey hey..)

I really don't see the velocirapter going into anything other than a destop - and even at that its purely for bragging rights. A 2.5 in a 3.5 slot? It was made purely to be able to say we've built the first 10000 sata in a 2.5 case.

Why would you wan't to have a raid 0 setup of these as the main harddrives if there external - permanently tying the laptop to the desk.
Thats why I'm not that blown away by the smartbay hardrive, yeah grand its a bit more space but it can't be used in raid - same as external harddrive and If you really need all the extra space you can get much better externals with a lot bigger capacity.

 

Lol i didn't say it was necessarily a good idea...
I'll stick with the 500Gb drive and use it for storage... 2 x 250Gb's Raid 0 for performance lol

OB