crasher Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Anyone know of a manufacturer who do laptops with dual HDD's? I have a specific need to spec up a laptop with dual HDD's. It will eventually be running an enterprise edition of Linux and Oracle RDBMS and need a minimum of 2 drives (with multiple partitions). External USB drives are not really an option as i need it to be self-contained. Most of the mainstream suppliers dont seem to have this as a configurable option (not that i can see anyway). The closest i've come is Acer, but you cannot custom-spec their kit, you can only buy their own specifications. And they all come with bl**dy Vista pre-installed. If anyone knows somewhere that can cater for this i'd appreciate a linky. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobK Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Do you need it to have CD/DVD drive as well as 2 HDs? You used to be able to get laptops with a media bay that you could put either a hard disk, CD drive or floppy drive in. Don't know if they're still made like that tho. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulrstaylor Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Do you need it to have CD/DVD drive as well as 2 HDs? You used to be able to get laptops with a media bay that you could put either a hard disk, CD drive or floppy drive in. Don't know if they're still made like that tho. Lenovo/IBM do this, I have one in front of me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crasher Posted July 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 I need a CD/DVD drive initially i guess (to unbundle the install CD's for Oracle) but dont need one in general day-to-day use. I'll take a look at the IBM's - although i guess they probably carry a premium for the name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chav Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 hiya, what storage capacity do you need? replace the hard disk in any laptop with a fast ssd (mtron) and partition it a few times..... performance will be far greater than 2 magnetic disks - especially for oracle access (magnitude difference) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crasher Posted July 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 I was more concerned with I/O contention. I'm planning to set it up with a DB tier and apps tier (ORacle EBS) (on the separate drives). I currently have a complete install of Oracle EBS running on Oracle Enerprise Linux 5, on a single HDD laptop which is okay, but can be reet slow when doing anything but the most basic of tasks. In terms of capacity i was looking in the region of 160gig minimum per HDD The Lenovo's look okay but not great (and are pricey). I've also seen that the HP HDX series of notebooks also have dual HDD capability but they're heavily biased towards multimedia (with Blu-Ray, Web Cam, etc) none of which will get a look in with me. They too are steeply priced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chav Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 A fast 2.5inch disk will do only a a few hundred random I/Os per second. A reasonable SDD will do 10,000+ so contention is the very least of your worries. Anything over 128GB is very expensive though. Lots of laptops have ESATA support now - no performance degradation and possibly safer as its easy to keep the external drives somewhere else when not in use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hopsta Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 I know that Alienware used to do them, but not exactly cheap! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cameo Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 My HP laptop has dual HDDs but is over 18 months old now. However a cursory search of the HP site identified that they still do dual HDD machines: HP Pavilion dv9790ea Entertainment Notebook PC (KL033EA) specifications - HP Home & Home Office products Like mine it has a 17" screen which is too big imho to be easily portable (I use mine as a desktop replacement). But I've been pleasantly surprised with battery life at >90mins. Some years ago we had Dell laptops at work which had interchangeable optical or 2nd HDD bay but I don't know if they still do them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted July 26, 2008 Report Share Posted July 26, 2008 Hi, Dell also do laptops that you can dual HDD, the second disk sits in the D Bay and replaces the CD\DVD Drive. It may not appear when you spec tha machine on the web but you can buy as an accessory. Jon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crasher Posted July 28, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 I know that Alienware used to do them, but not exactly cheap! You're not kidding! I've just had a aplay with their configurator and keep hitting the 2K mark! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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