ESATA 10k Rpm Raptor for notebook use...

Okay, just want to know how good of an idea this is, or not. All Opinions welcome. I have a 150GB 10k rpm raptor that I plan to put in a esata enclosure to use externally on my P6860, my notebook is stationary about 99.9% of the time, I plan on installing games and programs on it. Thank you for your input.

 

Yeah the eSATA port is plenty fast enough for you to load games and applications from. It shouldnt be a problem.

But why are you going that route when you have a HUGE internal storage solution? Did you run out of room or something?

 

Still have plenty of room, just want the speed of the raptor on my notebook, also looking into raid 0 with another internal hdd, not sure whats best...

 

External HDD? With raid 0? Uhm.. I hope you have a back-up power supply in case your power ever shorts out while on the laptop. That's not the brightest idea, IMHO to match a 10k with anything less...and it's external. Whatever floats your boat though.

 

I think he meant he is going to get another HDD to run Raid0 in the notebook AND have the external Raptor.

 

I'd suggest the Antec Veris MX-1 enclosure for the Raptor, but keep your receipt just in case the noise gets to you. It's a big honkin enclosure with plenty of cooling and weight, the latter of which might be important considering 10-15k drives are designed to be anchored securely inside a case. It also incorporates noise and vibration dampening, which you'll probably appreciate.

You're definitely going to want an actively cooled enclosure, though. Personally in your case, using the laptop stationary most of the time I'd go with something like this: http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=USBG-2XSA&cats=170&catid=170,161

Steel construction, built-in PSU, 80mm exhaust fan...you're not going to get much better for that price.

 

A RAID 0 array with 5400 RPM 320gb drives will give you close to the same preformance as the 10Krpm single drive, if you go with the 7200rpm 320gb scorpio blacks you should get the same and maybe a bit better preformance.

You would have to run a Benchmarking program on the enclousured drive to see where you need to shoot for though.

Though Burning the games to the External in ISO format would allow you to take your games with you between computers, which is a pretty good deal all things considered if you swap between alot of computers like i do in a typical year (not only mine but company computers and friends computers and what not)

 

A RAID 0 array with 5400 RPM 320gb drives will come nowhere near to the performance of a VelociRaptor VR150 in real world situations. That external USB mini enclosure is also no good. You will need a 3.5" enclosure due to the VR150s heatsink but I assume you already know that.

 

The 10Krpm Raptor not the 15K velociraptor. Its still a superior drive than the RAID 5400rpm drives, but i wouldnt think it would be that hard core of a difference
(well off to do research)

And he was talking about using an eSATA port as well not a USB enclousure

 

Ah whoops It's the access times that will make a huge difference though and even the 10k drives are far superior to 2 x 5400rpm in RAID. RAID has actually been proven many times to be of no benefit in desktop situations, sometimes actually a hindrance.

Yeah the USB enclosure that DestruyaX mentioned does have eSATA but I think it's for 2.5" drives. Could get one of these for 2 Raptors in RAID via the eSATA: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=519893

 

To actually answer your question yes it will work just fine. ESATA runs straight from the drive controller. I would be just as fast as if you had the drive attached directly to the notebook.

 

Yeah the 10K drive will be superior still, but the 5400 drives in RAID wont be "as" lacking as would be the case in a single drive.

I like RAID due to the transfer speeds. When i need to move a large amount of data i hate waiting for single drives to do all of the work writing, the rest of the preformance increase/decrease with a RAID array is just extras to me

its... so... pretty...
I'm so ordering that and dual 15K velociraptors for my exterior storage. Screw a solid state drive for gaming i'll happily pimp this thing.

Do you know if it comes with a cooling system? Cause if not i feel its going to be used as a sandwich cooker instead of a hard drive enclousure

 

That enclosure also doesn't tell you what kind of cooling fan the thing uses other than giving you a "check mark" to say it has one. That means it's probably a miniscule 40mm.

Here's one that's cheaper and has even more cooling: http://www.caloptic.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?product=eSATA3-D&detail=yes (free shipping too)

And here's one that auto-RAIDs: http://www.caloptic.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?product=MirrorDrive&detail=yes (couldn't find a review of it so it's your own risk)

And just in case you didn't know they existed: http://www.cooldrives.com/sahub5muussi1.html

Here's the product page for that MirrorDrive. Email them and ask if it'd work for a laptop: http://www.datoptic.com/cgi-bin/web.cgi?product=MirrorDrive&detail=yes

Considering they say it comes with PCIe 1x lane connector, I'd say it'll work fine, but I'd make sure first.

 

Wow i truely didnt know there were so many options for external HDD's

Who needs a server when you can just load your computer up with PCI eSATA jacks and stack a few of these things together in a rack.

A blade server capable of holding 20 HD's is going to cost alot more than 4 of those externals (even with the POS host computer and eSATA ports)

now i have to rethink everything...nah i'm still just going to build a server. Something to be said about 8+ core server mobo's

But really wow, thats alot of diferent styles of enclousures

 

The only problem with that two-port one I showed you is that you'd need a second port to plug in.

Fortunately, if you want RAID, SIIG makes an EC54 card that'll do 0 and 1 and has two ports.

 

Wow, thanks for all the great info, I too didn't know of all the external hdd options. Definately an eye opener, now I'm really gonna have to rethink this, now I'll probably get another raptor and pull a raid 1 esata drive, once again, thanks for the great info guys.