laptop with 2 hard drives?

ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers) wrote:

The $149 kit from baber states very clearly that it uses a PCMCIA card which
provides the access to an IDE notebook drive hooked up to it. The pros and cons
for this approach are about the same as for a USB-IDE converter kit. The price
seems high, but, then, I guess I don't know how much a copy of Ghost costs,
either.

$70. FWIW, it's a single computer license, so the "send it back when
you're done" thing isn't strictly legal.

As for SATA on a notebook computer, not yet. Possibly in a year or two. The
speed advantage of SATA is outweighed by the extra heat generated by fast
spinning SATA drives... Ben Myers

You could have a 3600RPM drive with a SATA interface, and the FD
bearings on higher (rotational) speed drives make them pretty
low-power. SATA gets you higher-speed interfaces (which laptops can't
currently take advantage of), ease of cabling (which isn't a laptop
problem), and (eventually) hot-swap capabilities (which already exists
in laptops with removable bay drives).

SATA laptop drives are going to be a chicken/egg thing, as no laptop
mfr is going to pay lots extra for the drives, and the drives aren't
going to be lowcost till everyone uses them.

Timothy Daniels wrote:
"Sparky" wrote:

My IBM ThinkPad has an "Ultrabay", integral with the unit,
which takes a variety of peripherals (it came with a
DVD/CD-RW unit). I bought a HDD Ultrabay adapter
for $45, which works great.

Adapter's made (marketed, anyway) by IBM, no USB involved -
it's an internal EIDE device, just like the DVD drive. This is what
I bought for my R40:

http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/st...catalogId=-840

It works great - it's funny at first to have 2 HDDs in a laptop, but
cloning the C: HDD is a snap, of course.

That's just what I'm looking for! Do you know if the equivalent
can be found in other makes of laptop PCs?

Looks as though Dell offers it for at least some of their laptops.

http://www2.shopping.com/xPF-Dell_De...ude_Hard_Drive

http://www.dealtime.com/xPO-Dell_48C...nd_8100_Series

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/P...furbished=&fe=

Do they have Google in your area?

"Sparky" wrote:
Timothy Daniels wrote:
That's just what I'm looking for! Do you know if the equivalent
can be found in other makes of laptop PCs?

Looks as though Dell offers it for at least some of their laptops.

http://www2.shopping.com/xPF-Dell_De...ude_Hard_Drive

http://www.dealtime.com/xPO-Dell_48C...nd_8100_Series


http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/P...furbished=&fe=

Do they have Google in your area?

Thanks for the links. Yes, Dell appears to have the equivalent of the
IMB Ultrabay. I didn't try Google because I didn't know what terms
to search with - "ultrabay equivalent" just didn't seem to the right terms.
I'll go check out Sony, now, since I can get 40% discounts on Sony
equipment.

*TimDaniels*

Since the push to SATA is for speed, speed and more speed, a 3600 rpm SATA could
be designed and built. But it would seem to be an oxymoron. No sense having a
fast bus to transfer data from drive to memory when the drive itself can't feed
data at anywhere near bus speeds. Of course, with a high enough track density,
the transfer rate of even a 3600 rpm drive could be improved... Ben Myers

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 17:38:59 -0400, William P.N. Smith wrote:

ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers) wrote:

The $149 kit from baber states very clearly that it uses a PCMCIA card which
provides the access to an IDE notebook drive hooked up to it. The pros and cons
for this approach are about the same as for a USB-IDE converter kit. The price
seems high, but, then, I guess I don't know how much a copy of Ghost costs,
either.

$70. FWIW, it's a single computer license, so the "send it back when
you're done" thing isn't strictly legal.

As for SATA on a notebook computer, not yet. Possibly in a year or two. The
speed advantage of SATA is outweighed by the extra heat generated by fast
spinning SATA drives... Ben Myers

You could have a 3600RPM drive with a SATA interface, and the FD
bearings on higher (rotational) speed drives make them pretty
low-power. SATA gets you higher-speed interfaces (which laptops can't
currently take advantage of), ease of cabling (which isn't a laptop
problem), and (eventually) hot-swap capabilities (which already exists
in laptops with removable bay drives).

SATA laptop drives are going to be a chicken/egg thing, as no laptop
mfr is going to pay lots extra for the drives, and the drives aren't
going to be lowcost till everyone uses them.

(Ben Myers) wrote:
The $149 kit from baber states very clearly that it uses a PCMCIA card which
provides the access to an IDE notebook drive hooked up to it. The pros and cons
for this approach are about the same as for a USB-IDE converter kit. The price
seems high, but, then, I guess I don't know how much a copy of Ghost costs,
either.

Ghost 9 costs $70, but since I already have Drive Image 7, any cost for
cloning software is excessive. It's good to know, though, that there are
several approaches to meet the need.

*TimDaniels*

I encourage you to check on eBay. There are literally hundreds of various
USB-IDE kits up for auction, many for reasonable prices. Also USB cases to hold
notebook drives, in the event that one wants to keep a drive somewhat
permanently in a USB case... Ben Myers

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 18:55:52 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

(Ben Myers) wrote:
The $149 kit from baber states very clearly that it uses a PCMCIA card which
provides the access to an IDE notebook drive hooked up to it. The pros and cons
for this approach are about the same as for a USB-IDE converter kit. The price
seems high, but, then, I guess I don't know how much a copy of Ghost costs,
either.

Ghost 9 costs $70, but since I already have Drive Image 7, any cost for
cloning software is excessive. It's good to know, though, that there are
several approaches to meet the need.

*TimDaniels*

(Ben Myers) wrote:
I encourage you to check on eBay. There are literally hundreds of various
USB-IDE kits up for auction, many for reasonable prices. Also USB
cases to hold notebook drives, in the event that one wants to keep a drive
somewhat permanently in a USB case...

I feel another epic search coming on.... :-) Just selecting which
removable caddy to use for my desktop took months!

*TimDaniels*

"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
I feel another epic search coming on.... :-) Just selecting which
removable caddy to use for my desktop took months!

I'm a bit confused as to what you want. If your laptop drive fails,
do you want to be able to boot off the spare, replace the main drive
and copy your image back, or what? All of these options and more have
been suggested, but you don't seem to like any of them...

William P.N. Smith wrote:
I'm a bit confused as to what you want. If your laptop drive fails,
do you want to be able to boot off the spare, replace the main drive
and copy your image back, or what? All of these options and more have
been suggested, but you don't seem to like any of them...


Ideally, I'd like to boot up from a 2nd internal HD, just as I can
do now with my desktop. Absent a 2nd internal HD, I'd like to
swap HDs using a spare that I can easily reach. To keep cloning
an easy and fast process and to not slow down the system if it's
running off a clone, I'd prefer a straight IDE transfer without
going through a USB or FireWire conversion. I do NOT want to
have to re-copy a system from an archive HD floating about in an
external enclosure with wires trailing out of it that run to an adapter.
I do NOT want to have to use the booted system with an external
HD connected by wires, etc. In other words, I'd like to be able
travel light and clean, and if a HD should fail, do a swap and
maintain the ease of demo-ing software that communicates between
apps running on two different laptops without the confusion and
delay of untangling and laying out wires and external peripherals,
all the while maintaining a client or a job interview rap.

As I see it, the closest I might be able to get is to have an
Ultrabay-like device for making clones, and accept having to
open the laptop in the field to swap HDs in the event of a failure.
BTW, how hard is swapping laptop HDs in the field?

*TimDaniels*

Timothy Daniels wrote:

(Ben Myers) wrote:
You've laid out some stringent requirements which may be difficult to
meet given
current and near-future notebook technology. The best you can do is
either an UltraBay device or a USB2-IDE converter kit, the latter
consisting of a small drive enclosure and the necessary cables and
adapters to attach the drive to a
USB 2.0 port, which I hope your notebook computer has. USB 2.0 will
sustain
disk transfer rates comparable to those of a drive inside the notebook.
USB 1.1
and earlier definitely will not. You can use the USB2-IDE converter kit
to
clone the drive. If you need to boot the system from the clone accessed
thru a USB port, your notebook must also be capable of booting from the
USB drive.

Swapping of drives in the field is not difficult at all, provided you
carry the
right tools. Most notebook computer drives can be accessed with a small
Philips
head screwdriver. Examine yours to see what tools you need. Swapping
drives is quicker and easier if you have an extra drive caddy for the
second drive. Otherwise you have to remove the drive/caddy from the
system, remove the drive from the caddy (usually 4 screws), put the
replacement drive in the caddy, and put the replacement drive/caddy back
inside the notebook.

Firewire is an acceptable alternative to USB, tho not as popular on Intel
computers as on Macs. Firewire is just as fast or faster than USB,
depending on
the devices hooked up to it. If your notebook can boot from a hard drive
attached to its presumed firewire port, then you can do everything with
Firewire that can be done with a notebook bootable from USB...

Thanks for the info, Ben. For the record, I don't have a laptop now,
but I shall be in the market for two (2) identical laptops in a few
months,
and I was investigating the HD backup availabilities. I know that there
may be no system that meets my entire list of "druthers", but it's good to
learn
what devices come closest. Thanks, again.

*TimDaniels*
I've swapped the drives in mine a few times. I have a Dell Latitude C400
and its drive slides out the side after removal of a single screw. Most
business line laptops are built to have the drive swapped easily as
corporations will standardize on a model so user calls helpdesk with a
broken laptop, they bring the spare, swap the drives and hand it back to
the user. I picked up a spare tray from a parted out laptop for $7 and put
a 60G drive in it and pulled out the 20g and slid in the 60g. If i were
ever to need to go back to the original drive (say I had to send it in for
warranty service) I could just swap the drives back. The original drive I
popped back in a used the cd's that came with the laptop and loaded a clean
blank install of windows. The 60G I run normally boots Linux and has all
my files. I kept the old drive with windows in case I would ever be
somewhere and need to boot a windows system for whatever reason.