Vaio Z HDD bays

Does all Arrandale Z's have 2 drive bays? Or is that only true for the signature collection version?

 

That depends on how you define "drive bay". If you mean standard 2.5" or 1.8" drive bays, neither have two.

The ones delivered with SSDs, no matter whether it's signature collection or not, have two proprietary drive bays, both of which are in use, plus a third drive bay which is used by the CD/DVD/BD unit.

The ones delivered with a HDD instead of SSDs have a 2.5" 9mm drive bay where the CD drive otherwise would go, occupied by the HDD, and empty space where the proprietary drive bays would go.

So if you wanted to add another HDD or SDD, you're out of luck, unless you're willing to buy an SSD model and get rid of the CD, or you're a master with a Dremel and adapting proprietary cables, in which case you can probably buy a HDD model and fit a 1.8" drive in the space for the Sony not-quite-standard-size drives. And no, you can't buy the "special size" drives from Sony either, other than as repairs.
Oh, and if opting for an SSD model with quad drives, you can't rip out the DVD drive and put in a fifth drive either, without the BIOS bugging out on you (which affects the CPU). The BIOS can't deal with five drives.

 

Is there any chance to swap stock 128GB SSD with Intel X25-M ?

 

That's answered above.

 

thx arth1, for both messages, they were very helpfull. now I'm little bit confused... swapping is little bit risky and it seems that Sony engineers forcing us to do not do.

May be I can go for OCZ Vertex 2 or Corsair Force as you advised.

 

So can i go buy another ssd and put that in there or its going to be no joy?

 

Already answered above. NO JOY

 

But why techanimal? So my only solution is just use the express card ssd? How about i get a intel 160 ssd 1'8 G1 and replace the 128 one?

 

We've covered the SSD replacement topic, in massive detail, many times.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6050427-post275.html

Net-net, you cannot replace the Sony SSD's, even with 1.8" drives. The Z1 uses proprietary drives for the RAID setups.

 

Why the heck they won't allow you to update the drives and put what you want to put in there? Why are they acting like apple lol!

 

They're not "acting like Apple", they're just being Sony.

As the OP, I'm a tad disappointed that my original plan of sticking a secondary storage drive into the Z (and perhaps replacing the stock SSD with an Intel one sometime down the line too) won't work.

Yet at the same time, I can't say that this was unexpected coming from the same company that also brought us things like ATRAC, the PSP homebrew cat-and-mouse game (which predates iPhone jailbreaking by years), and of more relevance to notebooks, the VT-locked BIOS on older consumer-oriented VAIOs.