WD Raptor 74GB on a XI 2550 laptop?

[januszian]

Hello.

So I was just wondering, if I buy an ESATA Expresscard and an ESATA 3.5" cradle/Enclosure (and in it a WD Raptor 74GB), will I get Raptor desktop performance with my laptop? (or even close to it) In terms of seek times and transfer rates.

I was thinking about putting my Vista home premium on the raptor then.

My laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens XI 2550 with a T9300 processor.
It has two WD 2500BEVS 250GB 5400rpm drives in it that can be put into RAID 0 configuration.
Are 2.5" drives more reliable than 3.5" drives? In terms of using Raid 0? I could use the internal drives with Raid 0 as my edit disc in music and video software. And as swap file disc too.

Currently my HDD's show a seek time of about 17-18 ms which is a bit slow in my eyes. Transfer rates are about 30-60 MB's.

I also have a Lacie Quaddra 2 ESATA drive and it gives REALLY good HD tune values! Minimum 37.5 Maximum 76.9 access time 13.2 and burst rate 82.4

That seems to be also better than the internal drives...

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

So you want to boot your laptop off of a EXT disk?

If so then a DESKTOP is better for you.

 

[jay2tall]

So you want to boot your laptop off of a EXT disk?

If so then a DESKTOP is better for you.

I completely agree!

 

[LoneEagle]

But will need a big briefcase! A laptop with external HDD is still smaller than a desktop...

 

[rodney_ws]

My 74GB always ran a little warm... nothing extreme, but noticeable. That said... I had decent airflow. You're talking about putting one in a tiny enclosure. Either get a laptop with a 7200 RPM drive or just get a desktop... luggables are just silly.

 

[CNeufeld]

You know, I wrote up a posting that basically said "Replace your 5400 rpm drives with 7200 rpm drives", but then I checked out the Tom's Hardware review of 2.5" drives (http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html), and your drives are doing pretty good. You can probably get better access time than your current times (like 14ms instead of 18), but whether you'd be able to notice the difference without a benchmarking program, who knows.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend RAID 0 for a desktop system, and I'd probably be less likely to recommend it for a laptop. Mostly because if something happens to your computer, it will be more difficult to recover because not many laptops support RAID arrays, so you'd probably have to get YOUR laptop working to get any data back. With a desktop, you have a chance of at least just replacing the motherboard (or RAID controller) with a part from a local store. So just make sure you have a good backup/recovery scheme in place if you go down that path. Well, you should have a backup/recovery scheme in place anyway, but still...

Clint

 

[januszian]

Don't worry guys, I really do know what I (!!!) need and what I'm doing...

I bought a laptop because I wanted a smaller system. Sometimes I take my PC with me to studio where we record my band. Laptop is just SO much more convenient. And if I want to take it somewhere other than the studio, now I can without any hassle.

Also, I bought a laptop because my needs aren't in gaming so I don't need the absolute best performance.

But HDD's are bottlenecks in laptops. None of you can deny that.

So just wanted to know if it's possible to use a raptor in a laptop. Not if it makes sense to someone else than me.

 

[runswindows95]

You're right about one thing. It doesn't make sense. Also, if you're not worried about performance, then why are you so worried about the hard drives. Overall, you're going to add more stuff to lug around with laptop. A total pointless idea.

 

[Aragorn]

I know recording wil often eat a laptop hard drive alive and the bandwidth just doesn't cut it but you should be fine with a solid firewire external for media and recording to and your internal hard drive for boot and swap file. You don't nead a raptor, you can go for a less expensive bigger drive.

That said, no reason boting from eSATA shouldn't work.

 

[jay2tall]

I know recording wil often eat a laptop hard drive alive and the bandwidth just doesn't cut it but you should be fine with a solid firewire external for media and recording to and your internal hard drive for boot and swap file. You don't nead a raptor, you can go for a less expensive bigger drive.

I agree with this part. Is it your OS and Apps that are the issue or is it working with Data files? I have a feeling it is the the 2nd. Go with some quick external storage and work from that. Let your laptop use the internal for OS and apps. If you really need performance make a small box PC with handle or get a high performance laptop like a Dell XPS or something of that sort.

 

[utaka95]

Not trying to start a flame war guys but, musicians ask LOTS of questions, but rarely want answers that don't agree with their narrow view of things. He JUST wants to know if it will work, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks about it. It probably will work, and the rest of us should just forget about it.

 

[MrLinux]

Might be a problem finding a housing that'll take a Raptor due to the cooling and SATA 1.5Gig interface, other than that it'll probably work.

Cheap housing tend to have no cooling and work at the slower speed, better ones that have the cooling (often) only support SATA 3.0Gig.

That's my opinion, if anyone don't like it, I have others (to quote Groucho Marx).

 

[januszian]

Not trying to start a flame war guys but, musicians ask LOTS of questions, but rarely want answers that don't agree with their narrow view of things. He JUST wants to know if it will work, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks about it. It probably will work, and the rest of us should just forget about it.

I know that having a separate disc will reduce portability and batterylife and everything dramatically. (I ain't a fool...)

But still I asked my question because I portability isn't a major requirement to me.
And yes a laptop is still easier to move than a desktop. Even with several external devices so that doesn't need to be mentioned anymore.

I bought a laptop now because it will have enough power to do recordings and editing. When I truly need ultimate power in the future, I'll buy a desktop with 8 cores and 12 gigs of ram and what not...

Just wanted to know will I get more HDD performance with a 3.5" desktop drive. When the time comes, I'm surely going to get SSD disc/discs in my laptop...

Thanks for your replies though!

 

[boonality]

Why not replace your 5400's with 7200's? Going from a 5400 to a raptor "might" be a noticable difference but going from a 5400 to a 7200 is more cost effective and the seek times are right between the other two, and with that you can just swap out your internal drives and don't have to carry anything else around.

 

[FrozenGpu]

Not trying to start a flame war guys but, musicians ask LOTS of questions, but rarely want answers that don't agree with their narrow view of things. He JUST wants to know if it will work, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks about it. It probably will work, and the rest of us should just forget about it.

I noticed that as well...