Second **internal hard drive in Dell Inspiron . Possible?

In article ,
Michael wrote:

it possible to install two hard drives internally into a Dell Inspiron 8200
laptop?

I have a Toshiba 8100 in which I've replaced the DVD drive with a third-party
carrier which contains a second hard drive. I have a CD drive in the expansion
bay, but obviously I don't have a CD drive when using the machine as as a true
portable.

I boot XP off the first drive, and FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT off the second drive.

The carrier came off eBay; it was made for an older Toshiba machine, but works
fine in the 8100.

I have no idea if this solution works on the Inspiron 8200.

Mike Squires
--

Mike Squires (mikes at cs.indiana.edu) 317 233 9456 (w) 812 333 6564 (h)
mikes at siralan.org 546 N Park Ridge Rd., Bloomington, IN 47408

We'll see. Here we have a thread started by a guy who wants to add a second
internal drive. The very same thought has occurred to all of us here-I know
I have thought of it several times and heard folks at work ask me if they
could do the very same thing. How long before the manufacturers start
answering our needs? It is getting to the point where laptops are more
portable PCs instead of mobile PCs, if that makes sense. Some laptops can't
even make it through a whole DVD without a battery change or a dual battery.
On the road data and the ability to use it is more important than ever and a
RAID 1 array could really save the day. Mark my words on July 1 2004,
before too long we will see multi drive laptops configured with raid arrays.
Or not, but I personally believe it will happen.

--Dan



"Boll Weevil" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 23:26:55 GMT, "dg" wrote:

With raid gaining popularity with the almost average PC user, I think
we'll
be seeing 2 disk raid arrays in laptops before too long.

--Dan

What??? You smokin crack?

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 10:17:19 GMT, "rstlne"
wrote:

[ Snip ]

Would it be possible for 2 drives to be inside one housing with the main
reason being so you can connect 2 sata connectors for raid 0 ?

Sure, it's possible. A while back IBM had a 5.25in drive that was
really a pair of 3.5in drives in the same enclosure, sharing a single
interface. (I seem to recall that the total size was ~4GB, i.e. each
3.5in mechanism was 2GB or so).

It worked, and worked well, but wasn't a commercial success since it
didn't save much over two 3.5in drives.

However, the issue with most notebook systems is the tradeoff between
size, weight and power. If you doubled the number of disks, you'd
double the power consumption of your disk subsystem, which would drive
the demand for a larger battery subsystem, etc. So you could
compromise by using slower (i.e. lower power consuming) disks, which
would make sense for RAID-1 reasons, but probably not when compared to
a single fast disk.

In short, you've stumbled into the portable-vs-laptop argument that
raged back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which resolved itself by
recognizing that small, light computers with excellent battery life
sold better than big, heavy computers with poor battery specs. That
said, there *is* a market for battery-less portables, which is growing
due to the ready availability of external power sources (e.g. on
airplanes, either by in-seat power or by separate external battery
bricks). But as a market segment, it's not nearly as important as the
opposite philosophy: tiny, light systems with good synchronization
capabilities (i.e. super-PDA's).

Malc.

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:21:01 -0600, Thomas Wicklund
wrote:

Michael wrote:

Hi,

I am not a laptop user so please bear with me when I ask this question: Is
it possible to install two hard drives internally into a Dell Inspiron 8200
laptop? It seems like there would not be room for two hard drives that are
internal.

You might add an external hard drive (PC card, USB, etc). Even if there
is physical space for a second internal drive (doubtful), laptops run so
hot that the second drive would most likely cause things to overheat.

Errr... My (old) Dell Latitude C810 (and it's siblings, the C800 and
C820, plus some Inspirons, to return to the point) happily runs with
two internal drives. Right now, it has two 40GB IBM 5400rpm drives,
plus its DVD-R/-RAM drive on the side. Even an ancient Inspiron 3700
could handle the second drive (but in that case it had to sacrifice
any CD-ROM or floppy drive to do it).

BUT: the second drive is removable, and gets replaced with a second
battery when I travel. With both batteries, the thing will play DVDs
for 4 to 5 hours (err... I mean, it will let me work very, very hard
for 4 to 5 hours)...

Malc.

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 18:07:43 +0000 (UTC), (Michael
Squires) wrote:

In article ,
Michael wrote:

it possible to install two hard drives internally into a Dell Inspiron 8200
laptop?

I have a Toshiba 8100 in which I've replaced the DVD drive with a third-party
carrier which contains a second hard drive. I have a CD drive in the expansion
bay, but obviously I don't have a CD drive when using the machine as as a true
portable.

I boot XP off the first drive, and FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT off the second drive.

The carrier came off eBay; it was made for an older Toshiba machine, but works
fine in the 8100.

I have no idea if this solution works on the Inspiron 8200.

Yup. Actually, having done some homework, the I8200 is the Latitude
C820, so it's pretty much identical to my Latitude C810.

So the OP can happily stuff a second hard drive in the "removable
media bay", retain their "fixed optical"
CD-ROM/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-R/whatever drive on the side, and away they go.

The BIOS will let you boot off either disk...

(Actually, if you flash the BIOS so it thinks that it's a Latitude
C820 instead of an Inspiron 8200, you can put it in a C/Dock-II
docking station and get a *third* disk via the additional media bay in
the station. You can boot off that, too, IIRC).

The necessary Dell disk carriers are all over eBay, and cost less than
$40 or so...

Mike Squires

Malc.

Malcolm Weir wrote:
On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:21:01 -0600, Thomas Wicklund
wrote:


Michael wrote:


Hi,

I am not a laptop user so please bear with me when I ask this question: Is
it possible to install two hard drives internally into a Dell Inspiron 8200
laptop? It seems like there would not be room for two hard drives that are
internal.

You might add an external hard drive (PC card, USB, etc). Even if there
is physical space for a second internal drive (doubtful), laptops run so
hot that the second drive would most likely cause things to overheat.


Errr... My (old) Dell Latitude C810 (and it's siblings, the C800 and
C820, plus some Inspirons, to return to the point) happily runs with
two internal drives. Right now, it has two 40GB IBM 5400rpm drives,
plus its DVD-R/-RAM drive on the side. Even an ancient Inspiron 3700
could handle the second drive (but in that case it had to sacrifice
any CD-ROM or floppy drive to do it).

BUT: the second drive is removable, and gets replaced with a second
battery when I travel. With both batteries, the thing will play DVDs
for 4 to 5 hours (err... I mean, it will let me work very, very hard
for 4 to 5 hours)...

That sounds like it's designed to accept a second drive. I was thinking
of trying to add a second hard drive to a laptop not designed to accept
one. The biggest problem is most likely heat rather than space.