RAID 0 on laptop, is it possible?

herbalfire

Posts: 49   +0
Hi I would like to know if its ppossible to perfom a raid array on my hp g62 451sa as id like to convert the disc bay for aanother hdd and use raid. does anyone know if it can be done?
 
Creative idea, but my guess is that it likely not possible.
This is going to be limited by the motherboard itself (combined with bios options).

Even if the cd/dvd is sata, the two sata ports may not be configurable as raid.
Unless your motherboard intended a raid option, you will be out of luck.

Since there is nothing in your manual about raid (DL the pdf and search)... I take it as confirmed.
BUT... if you want to explore further, see what options are presented in BIOS.
I doubt you will find anything there either.
 
Yeah I had a look at the bios nothing in there I think ill just seu up an ssd as my main boot drive and use my current drive as storage instead, thanks anyway
 
You will be happy with the ssd for start-up time and for battery life,
but if you intent to power your external drive from usb,
that will shorten your battery life again.
 
I was thinking more of putting my hdd in one of those bay converters, do you think I will notice a significant power drain using 2 drives at once?
 
If the hard drive enclosure has its own power supply (wall-wart) you will be fine.
But if you are looking for the ability to use your computer away from AC...
then the external enclosure will be powered from the battery.
NOW, you will have the drain both from the hard drive and from the ssd.
The ssd drain will be small, (varies from maker to maker and by model)
But, bottom line, the total run time will be less running both than with the current configuration.
One answer is to just use your ssd like you currently use your hard drive,
and save the hard drive for a back-up drive, and for use at home
under conditions when you do not need to worry about battery run-time.
 
I was thinking more of putting my hdd in one of those bay converters, do you think I will notice a significant power drain using 2 drives at once?
SSDs only use a couple of watts under load and less than 1W in idle. If anything you're going to see battery life increase because you won't be accessing the HDD as often.
 
@slh28
I think it may depend on how he uses his computer...
If he has the external hdd as his "Files/Documents" folder, as he suggested,
and does a lot of opening, saving, and closing of those documents... or...
If he has autosave configured to save frequently, that is still a lot of drive access, and power-drain.
That is why I suggested using his ssd as he currently is using the hd.
This is all speculative and theoretical.
The only way to know for sure would be to test his particular configuration and use patterns.
 
I'm with Slh28 here. Even if he linked his personal folders to the HDD they still wouldn't work the hard drive as much as it would be if the OS was installed on it. If battery life life was a massive priority, and you were clever about sleeping the disk when not in use I'd imagine an increase in battery life is possible.

The reality is the SSD uses so little power that battery life will at worst remain as it is now if you used an SSD/HDD combination.

For me personally, I don't see much point in optical drives in laptops these days, so I'd just swap it out for a HDD converter and use that with a large mechanical disk for storage instead.
 
For me personally, I don't see much point in optical drives in laptops these days, so I'd just swap it out for a HDD converter and use that with a large mechanical disk for storage instead.
Quite a few people at work here do that but haven't heard of anyone trying RAID. I was considering it myself but with no RAID-0 + TRIM support in Sandybridge I gave it a miss.
 
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