What should I get?

[gentrinity]

Im looking at HP notebooks and the prices are really great. The 17' inch models allow for RAID 0 with two 80GB 5400RPM HDs, and I dont know how much of an upgrade thats going to be over getting an aftermarket travelstar 7K100, please comment.

 

[Lazn_Work]

Raid 0 on a laptop? I would avoid that, and go for one 7200rpm drive for the boot drive. If you want more space, get a big slower drive in the 2nd slot. But that is just my feeling on the subject.

 

[drizzt81]

I think the correct answer to this question depends on your application needs. If you are looking for a laptop with a longer battery life, using two HDDs is a poor idea, since they are going to draw more power than the single 7.2k rpm drive.

However, if you application can be sped up significantly by using RAID-0, then there may be a good reason for using two drives.

All-in-all you haven't told us what you want to do with your Laptop aside from the "price is great", so commenting on this is pretty hard, don't you think?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Despite the increased shock tolerance of laptop drives, I'd still worry a lot about dropping it and destroying all your data. Unless you're using the machine for something that needs a high STR (video capture, audio capture, or database stuff), I'd recommend against raid 0.

 

[swatbat]

Despite the increased shock tolerance of laptop drives, I'd still worry a lot about dropping it and destroying all your data. Unless you're using the machine for something that needs a high STR (video capture, audio capture, or database stuff), I'd recommend against raid 0.

While I kinda agree with unhappy I'll add to it. Raid 0 will give you a tiny preformance bump but at the cost of battery life and give more points for failure. If you get one have a good backup plan where the important data is backup off the system. If you are getting a 17 inch notebook I question how important battery life would be but it is something to consider.