IDE-RAID With Mini Hard Drives: THG Shows You How

So far, we've not heard of anybody putting 2.5" drives into a RAID array. However, all we need is a simple test system, an IDE RAID controller and two notebook drives. Let's get started!

We received two 2.5" drives from Fujitsu: the MHN2150AT and its bigger brother, MHN2300AT. The two drives are equals, technically speaking, only differing in capacity (15 vs. 30 GB) and some performance differences.

Fujitsu MHN2150AT And MHN2300AT: 2.5" At Its Best

Here's a summary of features:

• 4.200 rpm
• 2 MB Cache
• 12 ms Seek Time
• UltraATA/100 Interface
• Size: 70 mm x 100 mm x 9,5 mm

The drives look pretty much the same, and both will tell you the configuration information. Here, what applies to desktop drives can be applied to notebook models: they can be run either as Master (drive 0) or as Slave (drive 1).

Refer to Fujitsu's Website for more information about these drives:

http://hdd.fujitsu.com/global/drive/mhn2xxx/catalog.html

This picture makes it quite clear how small such a notebook drive is, in comparison to a 3.5" diskette.