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2.5" Drives On the Desktop 291

Posted by timothy from the when-big-sucks dept.
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."
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2.5" Drives On the Desktop

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  • Nice but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stecoop ( 759508 ) * on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:52AM (#15581998) Journal
    Its a good idea until you find out that the drive 224 dollars and 99 cents [newegg.com] when the desktop competition runs about 70 bucks [newegg.com]. The drives in laptop are the slowest component; I wish laptops could reverse rolls and use dektop drives instead. Maybe one day the power levels will drop to an acceptable level to do this.

    • Re:Nice but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thebdj ( 768618 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:56AM (#15582029) Journal
      There is no need. You can find 7200 RPM laptop drives. Just be prepared to pay even more then the 5400 drives and wait for a bit more heat. Desktop drives in laptops makes no sense. The goal has always been to improve power consumption, size/space, and heat. This is something that desktop drives don't necessarily have to strive for as they have nearly "limitless" power available, much more space available, and better heat dissipation, largely because of the extra space, but also the availability of coolers.
      • Yes, you do get 7200rpm drives, but they are still slow. A notebook drive, at the same spindle speed is an order of magnitude slower than a similar full size drive. I paid a ton of money for a fast notebook drive and it made no noticeable difference, so now I am using cheaper drives again.

    • Re:Nice but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jacksonyee ( 590218 )
      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 i

    • Re:Nice but... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Fred_A ( 10934 ) <fred@NOspam.fredshome.org> on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:32AM (#15582334) Homepage
      Good idea ?

      Sortof...

      Article summary :
      You can put a laptop drive in a desktop machine. Even though it's slower, everything will still work.

      Well, Duh.

      Well everything also works on my laptop, thanks for the amazing insight on the intricacies of hardware. Basically, disks work. Even the slow ones. I'm glad to know that.

      Excuse me while I'm going to put an array of compact flash microdrives in my fileservers.
    • I agree - most laptop disks are awful, and an incredible brake on otherwise speedy systems. I'm always amazed to see a 2GHz Core Duo laptop shipped with a 5400RPM (sometimes even 4200RPM) disk.

      Mine was, for example. I spent the extra 7% to add an after-market 72kRPM SATA disk (80gb vs 120GB, but hey, the 120GB is still useful in an external enclosure) and the laptop's performance about doubled for many tasks. It's worth every cent. The fact that Apple offer 72kRPM disks in their laptops is one of the bigges

  • quiet home computers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by invader_allan ( 583758 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:53AM (#15582008)
    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.
    • I'll give you the low power requirements, but the other design criteria for laptop drives are small size and low weight, bandwidth and storage size come last. I would pay extra for a quiet, low power drive, but not at the expense of bandwidth.
      • Laptops also have the problem of HEAT. Many laptops will either slow themselves down or fry themselves over this. So reworking a desktop machine so that it's a glorified laptop isn't necessarily a good answer.
    • These guys [logicsupply.com] are good.

    • Re:quiet home computers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:24AM (#15582276) Homepage
      A media center PC doesn't have to have it's own storage. The bulkier noiser components of the system can be somewhere else. There are a number of such "thin media clients" already available. One doesn't need to be limited to notions inherited from years of DOS desktop practices and capabilities.
      • I have one at home, it's called a "Modded XboX" I picked it up for about $150.
        • Dedicated WinMCE thin clients aren't much more ($200) and don't require the end user to "hack" them.

          The dedicated media thin client doesn't need any of the extra (wasted) components that might be in a re-purposed machine.

    • Re:quiet home computers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LehiNephi ( 695428 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:42AM (#15582414) Journal
      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.
    • While laptop drives help with cooling load, they aren't necessarily all that quiet themselves.

      I think we'll see within the decade solid state drivers. CF memory is now available in 3GB sizs for about $300; 32GB chips are now coming on the market; assuming these 3GB units use 8GB chips, we can imagine in the near year CF cards with a 12GB capacity at the same price point. These are already large enough to support a credible laptop computer, although you'd need ten or so to provide storage for a typical d
    • My XPS M140 has a 180W power brick. That isn't energy efficient in my eyes.

      But it is media center ready, even though I chose XP Pro over Media Center becuase that's what I needed.

      I do hear the drive on occasion though.

    • Re:quiet home computers (Score:3, Interesting)

      by xjerky ( 128399 )
      That's exactly why I bought a Mac Mini.

  • Costs are good - awesome SRAID opportunity :) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ilovegeorgebush ( 923173 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:55AM (#15582018) Homepage
    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.
    • Just what exactly is "SRAID"?
      • SRAID is the abbreviation for Software Rapid Array of Inexpensive Discs. It's the ability to use several discs to define a filesystem. There are numerous levels to RAID, some of which increase disc performance, while others increase the chance of keeping data if something bad were to happen to the disc(s).
        There are two forms - Software and Hardware RAID. Software RAID is configured by the operating system, whereas Hardware RAID is a standalone piece of hardware that holds the discs and provides configuratio

    • Re:Costs are good - awesome SRAID opportunity :) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @11:33AM (#15582824) Journal
      The average cost for the drive under review is around $200, which isn't bad.

      Compared to what exactly? You can get the same capacity, and much better performance, in a 3.5" form factor for under $50.


      What I think is interesting is the cost behind setting up, say, a 4 Element SRAID system with these.

      Why? For the same price, you could get four 500GB drives and have 2TB rather than 640GB... For a less than half the price, you could go with 320GB drives and have twice the space. For the same price as one 2.5" drive you could get the same 4-drive RAID as 3.5" drives.


      Could heat be a problem here?

      Heat (and relatedly, the somewhat lower power consumption) counts as the only advantage to using 2.5" drives. They cost more, hold less, and have shorter lifespans (They also make a more... "annoying" noise, IMO, though I don't know if I can fairly call them "louder"). Except for the niche markets of laptops and SFF/embedded, no one should ever even consider a 2.5" drive unless some design contstraint absolutely precludes the use of a 3.5".
  • The only pic that shows the scale of this thing is on page three. Here:

    next to an ordinary drive [xyzcomputing.com]

    In the other pictures the drive is by itself, so it could be as big as a lawnmower for all I can tell.

  • Mac mini? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ronanbear ( 924575 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:55AM (#15582028)
    2.5" drives are considerably more expensive. If there was a large demand for quieter drives it would make more sense to use quieter 3.5" drives.

    I don't think there are many Mac Mini owners who wouldn't jump at the chance of a slightly larger Mac Mini with a proper hard drive. Putting laptop drives in desktops is an exceptionally bad idea.

    • I specifically chose the Mac Mini due to its size -- and had the need for some serious storage and usage requirements. The built in drive was more than enough to run the system -- and in this case it has one purpose and only one purpose.

      It is hooked up to ~23 network cameras at 640x480 capturing real time 24x7 and storing it to the external drive array holding 3 terabytes of video. It is also hooked up to a 23" monitor and using a Powermate for zoom capabilities (among other uses) it is an impressive displa
    • "Putting laptop drives in desktops is an exceptionally bad idea."
      boy, that's pretty bad!
      You don't leave much room in your vocabulary for people like Micheal Jackson & the guy who drove a rocket car into a mountain!
      • fantastically bad idea, darwin award whore, mind numbingly stupid, uber idiot...

        Please. There's no shortage. Anyone willing to spend a few mil of their own money trying to get laptop drives as the default for the desktop is gonna get burned.

    • Re:Mac mini? (Score:3, Informative)

      by bobschneider8 ( 878023 )
      It's already easy to get a slightly larger Mac Mini with a 3.5" drive, by using one of the external HD cases that are designed to sit under the Mac Mini. Here's the one I use:

      http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack/ [macsales.com]

      This case plus a 250GB 7200 3.5" PATA drive cost me $170, less than a 2.5" 120GB drive. And I got USB and Firewire hubs built in as well.

      • That's pretty neat. I'd look at that if I was going to get a Mac Mini. Now try to imagine how much it would have cost if Apple had made the case just a little bigger and included a 3.5" hard drive. They could have sold it at the same price point.

  • 7200 spin 2.5 inch drives (Score:4, Informative)

    by the computer guy nex ( 916959 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:56AM (#15582030)
    "Its a good idea until you find out that the drive 224 dollars and 99 cents [newegg.com] when the desktop competition runs about 70 bucks [newegg.com]. The drives in laptop are the slowest component; I wish laptops could reverse rolls and use dektop drives instead. Maybe one day the power levels will drop to an acceptable level to do this."

    Many laptop manufacturers now give options for 7200 spin HDD's in laptops. I have one from Dell, it somehow runs as cool and quiet as a slower 5400

  • 2.5 Is Good For Raid Setups (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gasmonso ( 929871 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:56AM (#15582036) Homepage

    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]

  • Already happening (Score:5, Informative)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:57AM (#15582044) Journal
    Some Dell SX series desktop machines already use 2.5" drives.
    • umm, which one? there hasn't been an sx in over a year (sx280) and that used a 3.5" hd. it does use the same d-series optical drive that the laptops do. perhaps you are refering to the xps m2010, the laptop/desktop hybrid. that one is interesting, they offer two 120GB hds in a raid config.

  • Future of computing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by michaelvkim ( 981938 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:58AM (#15582057)
    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.

  • So... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jasin Natael ( 14968 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @09:59AM (#15582071)

    The next generation of laptop hard disks have performance characteristics that are competitive with three generations old desktop hard disk drives. I fail to see a story. I'd be much more interested to see them compare these new 'hybrid' laptop hard drives with genuine top-of-the-line desktop drives.

    And the newest hard disks aren't that loud. I just upgraded my iMac G5 with a WD Raptor (10kRPM SATA). You can definitely hear it more clearly when large files are being written or under swap conditions, but most of the time the difference in noise levels is indistinguishable -- meaning silent. And my subjective benchmarks reveal an almost 4x increase in the speed of common tasks.

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:18AM (#15582226)
      While that's true of what they're saying in this article, some of the fastest hard drives available right now are 2.5" drives. Check out the Hitachi Ultrastar 15K147 SAS. Average seek of 3.6ms, sustained data rate of 93.3MB/sec... All in a nice little 2.5" package. Of course, the 147GB model sucks down 12 watts at idle, but that's the price you pay for performance. Size, however, is no longer a price you pay for performance.

      • Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jasin Natael ( 14968 )

        Average seek of 3.6ms, sustained data rate of 93.3MB/sec... All in a nice little 2.5" package.

        Umm... Maybe you misread that. It's over an inch tall, and 4"x5.7", according to its spec sheet [hitachigst.com]. That would make it, by necessity, a 3.5" form-factor hard disk. It is nice, though. Now I just have to get a machine that can use SAS drives well, and save up a lot of money. I've got a 15kRPM Fujitsu hard disk around here somewhere that a customer gave me, but I never got around to shelling out the money for a

      • Size, however, is no longer a price you pay for performance.
        I thought it was obvious that smaller drives are faster (same capacity -> higher density, other things being equal). In my experience I've actually noticed laptop drives to be faster, but that may just be due to my particular setup of laptops and desktops.
        • You're right... That's the wrong model.

          I can't find the 2.5 inch model on their website, but they exist... There are plenty of news stories about them, and I've got one here.

    • Re:So... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Slashcrap ( 869349 )
      I just upgraded my iMac G5 with a WD Raptor (10kRPM SATA). And my subjective benchmarks reveal an almost 4x increase in the speed of common tasks.

      As a general rule, if a Mac user notices a subjective 4x increase in speed, that's probably equivalent to an objective 5% speed increase.

  • This is going to happen (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nokrog>> on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:01AM (#15582087)
    The cost differential might be large now, but at some point, it's going to be way cheaper in the long run to make only one type of drive for end user machines(you need a different kind of drive for servers....you just do). I have seen many desktops and alot of servers use a laptop CD/DVD drive in them. Eventually, they will make a desktop with a motherboard similar in size to a notebook motherboard, but it will have PCI Express or some other new connector for adding peripherals. You can already purchase PC card sound cards. It's a logical progression. On Dell's site, they have a new XPS machine in the notebook section and it's really just a very small and very powerful desktop. I have also seen the Pentium M being used in desktops now. The age of tall towers is going to start to wane. There will always be a need for larger cases, but those cases will now hold much more in storage and other hardware.
    • you need a different kind of drive for servers....you just do
      Care to elaborate why? I concur that you generally need to pay for higher quality/reliability for 'server' components (whatever that means), but besides that the drives should be compatible both ways.

  • 2.5" drives? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dubmun ( 891874 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:04AM (#15582109) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aXis100 ( 690904 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:06AM (#15582133)
    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.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by slashbob22 ( 918040 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:08AM (#15582150)
    I am not trying to troll here, but why?
    I have found notebook harddisks run hotter, they are slower, more expensive and because they are not meant for use within a tower will require some creative mounting. If you need to mount a large amount of drive space in a MicroATX, use one 600+GB drive instead of 10x60GB.

    The only conclusion they came to is that it was quieter and that there were other ways of silencing your desktop. I have a pocket 2.5" in a travel case, and it isn't very quiet. One day in the future we may see this HDD form-factor taking over the desktop market as we move towards miniturization, but IMHO the technology just doesn't seem mature enough.

  • Sorry for the quick rant. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SphericalCrusher ( 739397 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:11AM (#15582161) Journal
    I think for the money and time wasted on that project, that you should just get a 10,000 SATA Raptor to put into a desktop. Desktop computing is all about high-end hardware compared to portable computer s (PDAs, Laptops, etc). And for a desktop having a 5400 rpm harddrive (as a new project) is pretty slow. 7200 rpm harddrives are very cheap now. Also, you're not going to find a laptop with a high Front Side Bus speed, so I don't see why there's hype on this project. That is all.
    • And for a desktop having a 5400 rpm harddrive (as a new project) is pretty slow.

      Depends what kind of access pattern on the drive there will be.

      If all you will be doing with it is sequential access (like playing back MP3's for example), then 5400rpm would probably be just fine. A use case with a lot of random access, like the swap partition or an active database, would benefit from higher rotational speeds like 7200 or 10,000 rpm.

    • Desktop computing is in the eye of the beholder. For you and a lot of other /. readers, maximizing performance is important. For a lot of other people, silence and low operating costs are important. Grandma who only plays Yahoo games, writes e-mails and surfs the web doesn't need a 750GB drive or a 10K Raptor. For her, an inexpensive and quiet 40GB 5400 RPM drive might be just fine, particularly if it lowered her electricity by a few dollars a month.

      In addition, heat and power consumption are becoming stead

  • You mean, like a Mac Mini? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:13AM (#15582179) Homepage
    Like a nice, compact, almost-silent, energy-efficient, but slightly-underperforming Mac Mini?

    How could anyone write a whole article about 2.5" drives in desktops without even mentioning the Mac Mini?

  • Nostalgia for the Sounds of the Early Computer Age (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alzheimers ( 467217 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:21AM (#15582250)
    I may just be getting long in the tooth, but I'm starting to get nostalgic for the old sounds of the the early computer age. Back when you could put your hand against the heavy steel chassis and listen and feel to exactly what your computer was doing.

    Gone is the satisfying click-click-click feedback of the heavy tactile keyboards.
    Gone is the deafening WHEEEEE-WHEEEEEE-WHEEEEEE of the dot matrix printer.
    Gone is the atmospheric chuk-chuk-chuk grind of the hard disk.
    Gone is the ultrasonic whistle of the screen changing resolutions.
    Gone is the inquisitive thuka-thuka-thuka of a floppy disk scan on bootup.
    Gone is the warm handshake WEEE-ERRR-HISS of the modem.

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

  • I'll wait for "Solid State". (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blcamp ( 211756 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:23AM (#15582262) Homepage

    Sorry folks, I just don't see a need for a smaller hard drive when shortly there won't be a need for any hard drive whatsoever.

    Cheaper, faster, more reliable, higher-capacity Flash memory is coming.

    I'll wait for that particular bandwagon when it comes.

  • Old news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nessus42 ( 230320 ) <doug@nOsPAm.alum.mit.edu> on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:26AM (#15582285) Homepage Journal
    Mac minis have been using 2.5-inch drives on the desktop for quite some time now, and Sun has been using enterprise grade 2.5-inch SAS drives on many of their newer models of servers.

  • Quiet and Low Power? Just Buy a Laptop Already (Score:3, Insightful)

    by InitZero ( 14837 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @10:26AM (#15582286) Homepage
    The desktop is dead. Long live the laptop.

    I keep reading about people wanting a computer that
    is quiet, energy efficient and doesn't produce 80,000
    BTU of heat. Many people see the solution to the
    problem as retrofitting a desktop with huge heatsinks,
    remote DC power supplies, special home closets for the
    computer with long KVM cables and installing laptop
    hard drives in your desktops. That's just crazy talk.

    Folks, bit the bullet. Pay double (versus a desktop)
    for a laptop and docking station and be done with it.

    I haven't had a desktop in seven years and I don't
    miss it at all. It was a little rough at first with
    early laptop but we have long since passed the point
    where performance is limited in a laptop. My latest
    laptop is an IBM Thinkpad (well, Lenovo) Z60m. With
    a wide screen, 1.5GB RAM, 100-gig drive and 2gHz
    Pentium M processor, it is more than fast enough
    for anything 92% of all, even advanced, computer
    users would want.

    Docked, I am able to pretend it is a desktop, even
    using it with two monitors (a requirement in my
    computing book). Yet, I sip power, am quiet as a
    church mouse and produce next to no heat (compared
    to a desktop).

    As an extra bonus, I can take my computer with me
    wherever I go.

    (The 8% of you who really do need a desktop need
    not respond. You know who you are and why you
    can't make a laptop do what you need it to do.
    I'm okay with you not having a laptop.)

            Matt
    • I recommend the best of both worlds. Buy a Pentium M or AMD Turion based desktop computer.
    • Most people who do have $1200 at hand for a decent laptop prefer to keep it on their savings accounts for less futile things. Therefore, leaping from laptop to laptop to upgrade is pretty painful.

      Meanwhile, a desktop can be upgraded in $100 increments. None of these increments are particularly painful. No need to replace a display until it breaks (rare) or becomes obsolete (rare). Same for keyboard, mouse, and arguably HDD.
    • My major reason for having a desktop (despite the portability of a laptop being a very useful thing) is very very simple:

      Upgradeability.
    • Yes, but can your esteemed laptop allow posts of more than 45 characters per line? Hah! My desktop has no such limitations.

    • I keep reading about people wanting a computer that
      is quiet, energy efficient and doesn't produce 80,000
      BTU of heat. Many people see the solution to the
      problem as retrofitting a desktop with huge heatsinks,
      remote DC power supplies, special home closets for the
      computer with long KVM cables and installing laptop
      hard drives in your desktops. That's just crazy talk.

      Yeah, I'll concur, that's just crazy talk. Funny how silencing my desktop involved neither. But, hey, don't let reality get in the way of a good "my

  • Personally I want to take up 2 5.25" drive bays and position as many 2.5" drives as I can fit on their side for a RAID array, at 1-1.5cm that would be 8-13 drives although you'd need to remove a few to leave room for cooling which would be supplied by a large fan at the front & back for cooling. It would make a great raid array. Of course with 8-13 drives I'd want them to be SCSI (on different controllers of course) - but damn 2.5" SCSI drives are expensive, like this baby [europc.co.uk] - at ~£300 a pop you're
    • 8x 2.5" SAS drives in 2x 5.25" bays, available now [supermicro.com] from Supermicro.

      Xtore has a 2U 24x SAS JBOD here [xtore-es.com]

      I imagine that an array with vertical bays and a pull-out shelf type arrangement could comfortably handle about 80 2.5" SAS drives in 3U of space. Power and cooling issues abound, however.

      LSI and others have 36 port expander ICs arriving in the pipe now. HP recently unveiled a few new server models that house more than a dozen drives (Proliant ML570 G4 with 18x drives.) 2.5" SAS is going to make a big impac
  • ... pursuant to some of the comments, why not just rip the mobo out of the laptop case and stick it into a desktop case. Use the laptop power supply, a desktop hard drive (cheap,higher speed), monitor, keyboard, etc. Result: a much quieter computer. Would there be any significant challenges vis-a-vis hardware? The only downside might be a lack of expansion slots but for most users this isn't such a big deal.
    • You don't even need to do that. Seriously. (Well, unless you enjoy paying the premium for the laptop, and then modding the desktop case, etc, anyway.)

      There are desktop motherboards that take a Pentium M CPU, and have the same chipset as a laptop motherboard anyway. Plus, they have AGP or PCI-E ports in case you want to put in a more powerful graphics card, have a standard ATX power connector, etc. Or you can get one of AMD's mobile CPUs, which plug into any el-cheapo desktop motherboard just fine. And AMD m

  • two 2.5" drives in one 3.5" bay = RAID (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChrisCampbell47 ( 181542 ) on Thursday June 22, 2006 @12:49PM (#15583381)
    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.

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