Hmm, to raid, or not to raid...

So, i'm contemplating spending $60 on RAID...
I'd be doing raid 0...
Will i actually notice any faster boots/loading and such?
(2 of the 320gb WD Scorpio black 7.2k)


How about battery life?

 

You will notice a slight difference in speed and with undervolting the gpu your battery life wont get reduced. Give and take from areas of the loptop. With this type of laptop I wouldn't be worried about battery life. I use the battery for sleep mode and transportation.

 

Yeah RAID 0 with 2 7200RPM drives will be a nice boost in preformance. Nothing earth shattering, but you will notice it.

It will effect your battery life and produce nore heat though. Remember you now have 2 drives doing everything instead of one so your hard drive activity will suck X(2) the power for everything
(X being the working and idle load the hard drives pull)

Now this wont really be that much battery life 5-10 minutes at the most, it will have an effect on heat generated. As the hard drives are passively cooled the double HD does have a tendency to get quite warm. Whether or not this matters to you is another think all together though.

It didnt bother me, but i ended up breaking my RAID array because it just wasnt giving me huge preformance boosts for the heat output increase.

 

hmm, this is an interesting point to contemplate, as i am not planning on getting a cooler (i kinda say 'meh' to coolers)


Was the heat effecting other areas of the laptop? or was it merley discomfort on your lap?

 

I have a massive home made lapdeck cooler so mine ran ice cold usually. But it was uncomfortably warm over the mouse pad when not using the cooler.

I dont think the drives were running in their "danger" temps but it was quite warm. And as you cant moniter temps when a RAID array is active you cant tell if your running 30 degrees or 500 degrees (not counting your lap bursting into flames )

 

hmm....
interesting...

I'll have to think on it.

I guess as long as it isn't going to be dangerous temps, i'm thinking i'll do it...

 

I choose not to raid, replaced the 5.4k wd scorpio with an seagate 7.2k drive, and used my old desktop sata II with enclosure for eSata. Now I just plug-in play with backup/music/videos/etc and not worry about battery/heat/time/backup.

 

the HDD is already a 7.2k

 

might want to check out this thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=359217

It might be that the 7200rpm drives are just producing too much heat. I have a custom cooler for mine so i never saw temps that hot... but with the threat of warped plastic and the poor passive cooling it might be a bit much.

Not sure though, its a tough call

 

not for his laptop