P150EM/P151EM/P170EM Hard Drive Bays

I'm wondering what the height is inside the hard drive bay and the optical drive bay if (if ordered with the HDD caddy installed)? I ask because I'm thinking of putting a 1TB drive inside, but it's 12.5mm tall. So lots of the comments complain that it is too big. I don't want to order it and then find out it won't fit. Can anyone shed some light on this topic?

 

The HDD/SSD bays are 9.5mm in height so that 12.5mm drive will not fit. I believe the ODD caddy is the same height. The users manual with all the specs was posted here if that helps.

 

That is quite unfortunate. But thanks for the information. It's better to find out now and not $100 later.

 

Newegg has some 1TB drives that are 9.5mm high:
Samsung
WD
Hitachi

Granted, they are more expensive but not horribly so (one is like 20 more).

 

Well my plan is to be pairing this with a 120GB Kingston HyperX SSD. The more expensive 1TB models (that will fit) are the same price as 7200RPM 750GB models. Realistically I'd never fill up 1TB, so now I'm questioning which is more beneficial... 1TB @ 5400RPM, or 750GB @ 7200RPM -- that's a 25% decrease in size for a 33% increase in speed (at least of mechanical parts).

 

If you're using it as a storage drive, the drop from 7200rpm to 5400rpm won't be as noticeable as if it were a system boot drive. If you think you'll use the space, I'd say that's more important than the marginal speed difference. If it were your primary boot drive, I'd probably go the other way because I'm spoiled by SSD's and a slow 5400rpm system drive would be a nightmare

 

I would use the 120GB SSD for the OS, games, and any program that couldn't be installed on a drive other than C. Everything else would be dumped onto the SATA II drive in the optical drive bay. Thanks for your input, I think I'll end up going with the 1TB drive.

 

Personally, I'm going for 7200RPM RAID0, no way would I settle for a slothful 5400RPM drive. On my old thinkpad, I even made sure to get a 7200RPM drive, despite how rare those were when it was around. Or rather, how rare ones that still work with it are.

 

Hmm that is interesting, but two things:

1) Doesn't running RAID across SATA II/III limit you to the SATA II's performance? I mean it's still RAID, but can you even do that between the optical drive bay and the normal hard drive bay?

2) I'm going to be using this for school, so I don't want to run the risk of RAID setup failing me and losing everything. I'm not too brushed up on hard drive reliability (mechanical or SSD), but doesn't running anything in RAID 0 double your chances of losing your data? I mean only one drive has to fail and bam you've got nothing...

 

1) Yes, but as far as mechanical hard drives are concerned, they'll never saturate a SATA II connection anyway. That's only an issue if you're running an SSD

2) Also correct, RAID 0 doubles your MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) because you're effectively relying on two drives not to fail. If one drive goes, you lose all your data over both drives. RAID 1 on the other hand would be a redundant setup with two disks, such that you'd have a complete mirror image if your primary disk failed. I prefer RAID 5 myself for the few times I bother with RAID at all (but it's a desktop/server solution since it usually uses 4-5 drives when I run it).

 

Does it need any special installations to activate RAID in P15xEM?
Select RAID as Sata-Mode in BIOS? Special Intel drivers?

Or just swap the odd for a hdd bay and there you go?