3rd HDD in Dell M1730?

I'm wondering if its possible to get a third HDD into M1730, in form of a caddy to replace the CD drive?

I didn't find such caddy on ebay, according to a few sellers, the one for M1710 doesn't work on M1730.

Can anyone comment on this?



I'm thinking of raiding a pair of 120gb OCZ Vertex drive, though that doesn't really provide enough storage. So I'm looking to put another 500 gb HDD in if possible.

Thanks

 

sorry, this does not exist for the M1730 AFAIK.

the optical drive bay require a special connection within it to be able to support an HDD.

 

The thinkpads have the option to do this with their ultra bay along with batteries.

When I had both a Dell and a thinkpad, I was comparing the drives and IIRC, the interface is physically the same.

Now even if the interfaces are the same, it still might not work due to BIOS limitations, etc.

Give me about 10 minutes here to grab some pictures.

Dell


Thinkpad

 

10 mins passed

 

Edited it in. But not sure they are the same now

 

So, it's either a BIOS limitation (my guess - have NEVER heard of ANYONE doing this with a 1730 before) or because the optical bay doesn't have the proper connection, which is what those caddies for I'm guessing on the m1710??

Worst case scenario I'm going to save up and get one of the new Sagers coming out - hopefully it'll have H/W RAID and then I can do RAID-5 with three HDD's/SSD's.

 

^^ yup.

the only notebook that can house 3 internal HDDs without having to swap out the optical drive is the Clevo D901C... as well as the upcoming D900F.

 

Does anyone ever test the HDD performance in D901C with 3x HDD RAID-0?

 

You can fit three in the ASUS G50 if you do some modification. The one harddrive bay is 18mm thick, so you can put two drives in their if you really wanted to

You can buy an adaptor, something like this is what you are looking for:
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=168

K-TRON

 

Wow, useful link...
The question now, how do we know what ODD we have (SATA or PATA) without opening the backplate?
Everest only shows my ODD as ATAPI...

PS:
AFAIK, ATAPI is the maker of PATA and SATA spesification standard.

 

Their are only two options, ATAPI and mini SATA
Mini SATA is two male connections, and ATAPI is a female connection of I believe 44 pins.
Their are both ATAPI and SATA optical drive to harddrive adaptors in the link I posted above

You will have to remove the optical drive to find out which interface you have. Most Dell's require only one screw to remove the drive, hopefully its the same for your XPS1730.

Guys, try not to use acronyms like AFAIK, it makes it much harder to understand. Please spend the two seconds extra and write what it is you are trying to say out

K-TRON

 

@K-Tron
LOL... AFAIK = As far as I know
Sorry...

Btw, i'm not the OP. but I do think i need to add a "smartbay" to my lenovo.

PS:
"Their are only two options, ATAPI and mini SATA"
The correct one should be "There are" not "their are"

 

Would it matter? 3 drives in RAID-0 in a laptop, of all things, is asking for trouble.

 

This reviewed laptop had a 3x SSD RAIO-0, in the D90xC chassis. Probably costs more than your first car though

 

Thanks guys, guess I'll keep looking.

MidnightSun, that set up is just...

 

Well, I just want to know how much the performance gain will be.

According to an article in tomshardware, a significant performance gain of RAID-0 will be achieved with 3 or more HDDs. but that article is for 3.5" HDDs.
So I'm curious with 2.5" HDDs

Thanks for the link. I hope there is one for HDD as well

 

Ok, i dispatched my ODD and turns out its PATA... dammn, I was hoping it will be SATA drive. This means i can't hotplug the ODD and the smartbay.

Anyway, in Everest, ATAPI = PATA.

 

Gophn - does the 900F have a H/W RAID controller?

Am currently in Dell Tech Support chat online to find out what the optical drive connection is...

 

It's IDE according to Dell chat.

 

its not out for testing yet.

I believe it will have Intel ICH10R.

but the previous generation of Clevo D900's have used hardware RAID (D900T and D900K) and software (D901C).

If you are doing RAID 1 or 5, software RAID (like with ICH9R) performs about the same as hardware.

RAID-0 seems to perform marginally better in hardware RAID as compared to software.

 

It appears these caddies simply fill the void of the optical bay and have a small IDE-SATA conversion, at least for our comps quicklite.

Gophn, if you don't mind, what was the raid card the 900t/k used?

 

D900T infact uses an Intel software based chipset to control raid, so it is software raid.
The D900K uses the VIA K8T890CE chipset with integrated raid controller

K-TRON

 

http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=179

So is this what I'm looking for for my computer??

Also, assuming this does fit, and bearing in mind my other harddrives run at SATA-II, and the optical bay connection is IDE, how will this limit the bus?

 

Not much i believe... probably 10-20MB/s performance penalty in real-life application (not benchmark). Oh, and your HDD will not able to use NCQ. Dunno how much performance penalty will be without the NCQ.

 

Even the 7200.4 cannot max out the IDE bus of 100mb/sec so performance should be as good as the native SATA harddrives.

K-TRON

 

+1 to that.
Currently, none of 2.5" SATA HDD have surpassed the 100MB/s magic barrier.

I'm curious though, how much perfomance penalty we will get without NCQ (SATA to IDE will negate the SATA's NCQ feature). Whether the penalty will affect access time only or transfer speed too...

CMIIW

 

I don't think it is possible to have a third HDD with your M1730, you should try saving for another setup..

 

If his Dell M1730 use a standard optical disc drive, he can add 3rd HDD using the newmodeus Optical Bay HDD enclosure.

 

So, do we know FOR SURE if this'll work yet?

Anyone here do it yet?

 

If i remember correctly, someone posted in previous page that he already use it.

 

Thanks for the link. Am reading it now...