2x 320GB 7200RPM (w/16MB Cache) in RAID 0?

Hello all,

I bought 2 x 320GB 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 7200RPM SATA Notebook Drive with 16MB Cache in anticipation of an Alienware m17x upgrade and was planning on running these drives in RAID 0. Order has since been pushed back twice and am quickly losing faith in Alienware and turned my head to the Clevo 901C machines. I've been to a few of the customization sites and noticed that none will offer two of the 320GB 7200RPMs in a RAID array - are there technical/mechanical/thermal limitations to such a set-up?

I asked about such an option on Alienware's support forums, but they give the usual, "it's all in testing, once deemed stable, it'll be offered as an option..."

Another question: Does the 901C shipped with one drive use the same hard drive cage as the older 900 models where the HDDs are stacked onto each other, secured to the cage, further secured to the chassis, and have a data cable to readily accept the two drives? Or are the two drives placed in two separate drive bays, forcing me to find another HDD cage and cable for the 2nd drive?

Thanks for your input.

 

if you contact the vendor, they can special order any parts for your system.

 

Thanks - that covers mechanical, but do they run too hot that it exceeds recommended thermal limits? Are there power limitiations as well?

Thanks again.

 

The reason you're not seeing it is because Sager doesn't currently offer the NP9262 with 7200RPM 320GB hard drives. Those will be available tomorrow at 11AM pacific time, and you'll be able to purchase them in RAID then

 

If anything, based on my admittedly uneducated reading of the relevant data-sheets, it looks like the new Hitachi 320GB 7200rpm notebook drives (e.g, the 7K320) should run a little cooler than the previous generation of Hitachi 7200 rpm notebook drives (e.g., the 7K200).

The data-sheet for the 7K320 is available here and the data-sheet for the 7K200 is available here.

For example, based on the foregoing data-sheets, the 7K320 dissipates, on average, 2.2W during seek operations and 1.8W during read/write operations. By comparison, the 7K200 dissipates, on average, 2.6W during seek operations and 2.3W during read/write operations.

If I'm reading these data-sheets incorrectly, I'm sure that someone will come around to correct me soon enough; however, until then I would hazard a guess that the reason the new Hitachi 320GB 7,200 rpm drives aren't being offered is because of cost and lack of sufficient demand, not thermals.

EDIT: Dang - that's what I get for being so long-winded; DarkSmiley beat me to it, and gave an even better (and shorter) answer!

 

Thanks for the replies. I already have the disks in hand; just waiting for the later and later arrival of my m17x (possibly soon on cancel). Every review that I've read about the Hitachi (vs the WD) mentioned that they were going to run just as cool and power efficient of the 5400RPM counterparts.

Similar drives were available in single drive configurations, but the highest capacity I could get at the same RPM was only 2x200GB. Just seemed odd to me that they wouldn't offer 2x320 @ 7200rpm.