RAID 0 on a laptop... Recommendable?

[gentrinity]

Alienware allows two 80GB 7200RPM HDs in RAID 0 configuration. Would anyone recommend this to try and get laptop HD speeds around Desktop speeds?

 

[dt]

it would be handy but just make sure any data that is important to you keep it on a flash drive or something because when 1 hd dies you usually lose it all.

 

[choirbass]

not for a laptop, no, due to the extra heat generated inside the very compact enclosure, not to mention your battery would be drained that much quicker...

...aside from the extremely minor performance increases in most desktop situations (except when booting up your system, running benchmarks, and when dealing with, transferring, and editing large data files; such as audio and video, which warrant up to a ~15% increase optimally, due to its higher str)

aside from those things, there would be no real worthwhile reason to have raid 0 on a desktop (or a laptop in this case)... gaming for example, offers extremely limited performance boosts in regards to load times for most games, in the range of 0 to 1 seconds on average improvement (compared to a single hdd)... unless the games maps consist of mostly bitmaps and such, then youll see a larger improvement

google for raid 0 game load times, or similar to that, and you should find quite a few benchmarks from reputable sources, indicating the limited performance improvements in most situations (particularly gaming, since its a common misconception)... and what would actually benefit you more than having raid 0 (for gaming in particular), which would be a faster single hdd, more memory, or a faster cpu

if youre going to go for a faster hdd though, on par with a fast desktop system that offers a noticable difference in performance, i would see about running an external hdd enclosure possibly for a single 3.5" hdd, one with prm, or even a raptor... unless youre opposed to running an external hdd to the laptop

 

[gentrinity]

Your recommendation has been my first choice all along. I started another thread on the subject, but I do not know if you can load from eSata or Firewire.

The reads of both technologies are pretty good, but for some reason, the benchmarks I have seen demonstrate that there writes are subpar. Both should perform well enough for a Raptor to run close to full performance when reading. which is obviously the more important one. But the slow write speeds are still bugging me.

eSata enclosures seem to be more common, as are PCMCIA cards, so Ill probably go with that type of connection. However, if I cannot boot from an eSata, Ill consider running all my apps and work files from the external drive to boost performance.

 

[chuckshissle]

If you use that laptop for daily commute then maybe not as raid 0 can draw much power and decreasing battery life. And there's the heat issue as well.

 

[choirbass]

yeah, the only option that i KNOW works, is from a usb 2.0 hdd (winxp and earlier)... i still have yet to try firewire or esata though on my desktop, to see if it works... theoretically it should work from all of the above interfaces under winxp, considering vista didnt allow it suprisingly from usb or firewire, but winxp did (for usb 2.0), without a problem

as far as the benchmarks... the interface i wouldnt think would show a drastic difference between reads and writes, not unless something was wrong... it could be a driver issue i would imagine, or another setting of sorts

edit: looking on google to see what i can find regarding firewire800

yeah... from what im seeing at this particular thread, it does definetly seem to be driver related http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware/browse_thread/thread/5d6f8ee8366dfe4d/3e6b93167708f857?lnk=st&q=slow+firewire+write+speed&rnum=1&hl=en#3e6b93167708f857