2.5" Drives On the Desktop

An anonymous reader points out an article on XYZ Computing exploring the use of a 2.5" notebook hard drive in a desktop computer. From the article: "The tradeoff for these qualities has always been limited capacities, high costs, and slow transfer rates, but a the recent progression in portable storage techology has changed the 2.5" drive greatly. We put the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB SATA notebook drive in our test system and took it for a spin."

quiet home computers

[invader_allan]

There is a growing demand for quiet home computers, and this is going to be more commmon (especially for media center PC's). There are even people who are hoping for mobile graphics chipsets to find their way onto PCI-E cards to help with low power and silent operation. Low power systems can make a huge difference in energy conservation, and they are becoming more and more popular. Desktops with a hybrid of laptop parts are always going to beat out mainstream desktop counterparts in noise and power consumption.

Costs are good - awesome SRAID opportunity :)

[ilovegeorgebush]

The average cost for the drive under review is around $200, which isn't bad. What I think is interesting is the cost behind setting up, say, a 4 Element SRAID system with these. Could heat be a problem here?

Whatever the answer, the advance of smaller (physically) but larger (storage) has arrisen from perpendicular recording [hitachigst.com] on the discs, which is itself a cool find.

2.5 Is Good For Raid Setups

[gasmonso]

You can pack quite a few 2.5" drives in a desktop to create some neat raid setups. An example would be http://www.maxpoint.com/home/products/perph/spec_p g/es-252/index.htm [maxpoint.com]

You can also find solutions that will hold several more drives. This could be usefull for small form factor setups that people (myself included) use for pvrs. Small, reliable, cool running.

http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

Future of computing

[michaelvkim]

I think the future of desktop computing lies not in performance and speed, but size and heat output. This goes for about 95% of computer users; obviously, gamers want ultimate performance, but my parents (and the majority of computer users) would rather sacrifice the speed for silence.

2.5" drives?

[dubmun]

You want quiet? Solid state storage is going to catch up someday soon. I'm more than willing to wait. I'm not interested in paying three times as much for a slow notebook HD with low storage capacity.

Storage combinations

[aXis100]

I've recently grown fond of external USB2 HDD cases.

Combining an internal 2.5" drive and external USB drives would be quite practical. You could leave the external drives off (and quiet) most of the time, hot pluging them only when you need them.

Re:Nice but...

[jacksonyee]

Desktop drives were never meant to be used in notebooks (the name "laptops" shall no longer be used after that exploding Dell fiasco). They're too big, too heavy, and generate too much heat; hardly something you would want to carry around with you in your bag. I've also found that notebook drives have much better shock tolerances, so you won't ruin a drive as easily by dropping it or banging it against something as you would a desktop drive.

I agree with the others that notebook drives make a lot of sense in small, quiet form factors though. If you're looking for small and you don't care that much about space, a notebook drive can fit your needs quite well. Got an entertainment center PC to fit in your shelve to build? Use a notebook drive for temporary storage and off-load the heavy files to a file server via gigabit ethernet somewhere else in the house.

I personally carry a notebook drive in a usb enclosure that fits in my pocket, and it is one of the best purchases that I Have ever made in electronics. Never underestimate the convenience of having 60gB in your pocket to carry documents, music, and movies on. I was even running Unreal Tournament 2004 off of it - portable gaming on any capable computer!

Re:quiet home computers

[everett]

I have one at home, it's called a "Modded XboX" I picked it up for about $150.

Re:quiet home computers

[LehiNephi]

Low power systems can make a huge difference in energy conservation

Actually, that's not as true as we would like it to be. I have an acquaintance who recently has been considering replacing his file server with a standalone, single-drive NAS. In order to justify the expense to his wife, he bought a Kill-A-Watt and measured the power his current file server was using. It was using 100W, vs. the 12W of the NAS. That's a difference of 88W. However, at our current electricity rates, that amounts to a whopping $8/month savings.

Considering that your hard drive is only consuming a few (as in, 10) watts, replacing it with a notebook drive won't save you any significant amount of money, even over the VERY long term. The advantages for notebook drives come, as others have said, in their small size and lower power consumption for notebooks.

Re:Nostalgia for the Sounds of the Early Computer

[Trepalium]

Gone is the inquisitive thuka-thuka-thuka of a floppy disk scan on bootup.

If you're lucky, you can turn this back in the BIOS setup program.

If the POST BEEP ever dissapears, I think the beauty and mystique of a computer coming to life will have been lost forever.

I guess you haven't seen some of those new boards that actually speak rather than beep their POST events [hardocp.com].

two 2.5" drives in one 3.5" bay = RAID

[ChrisCampbell47]

I've been using ArcoIDE [arcoide.com]'s hardware RAID (real hardware RAID! no software drivers!) for years, and my latest SFF PC machine has two 2.5" drives sitting in a 3.5" bay on top of their MicroRAID controller [arcoide.com]. Small, quiet, reliable ... this is a no brainer! The only drawback is that current affordable 2.5" drives run around 80-100 GB, so you can't do the 250 GB monster video setups. Personally 80 GB is plenty for me.

Re:Nostalgia for the Sounds of the Early Computer

[ThousandStars]

Gone is the satisfying click-click-click feedback of the heavy tactile keyboards.

The clack lives on for specialty keyboard users: see the Matias Tactile Pro [matias.ca] and the Unicomp Customizer [pckeyboard.com].

Variable speed flopplies on early Macs

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The motor would speed up on the inner tracks, slow down on the outer tracks, and went through three levels of speed in between. The motor was nice and loud, so there was in effect a 5-note musical scale. There were rumors of people composing music for the floppy drives.

Re:quiet home computers

[xjerky]

That's exactly why I bought a Mac Mini.