HMM... HHD/SSD recommendations for laptop.

[shevanel]

I traded my desktop parts for a Gateway P-7811 FX Laptop..

Specs:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor P8400 2.26 GHz | 3 MB L2 Cache | 1066 MHz FSB
Intel® PM45 Express Chipset
17-inch WUXGA TFT (1920 × 1200)
4096 MB 1066 MHz DDR3 memory (2 × 2048)
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GTS With 512 MB of GDDR3 Discrete Video Memory
9-cell Lithium-ion
1.3 to 1.7-inches (H) × 15.75-inches (W) × 11.75-inches (D)
Weight 9.2 lbs
200 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive

The laptop has 2 HDD bays for 2.5" drives, also supports RAID0 with 128 stripe

I was hoping to get advice on upgrading the HDDs...

Aside from performance I am concerned with battery life... as it stands I am expected to have about 1.5 hours run time on battery power which for me is plenty.. but as you will find below I am curious as to how much battery power a SSD could save compared to a standard 7200RPM HDD if any..

I was wondering if I could ask the audience and see what the results would be concerning the following scenarios and set of questions.

option A "Cheap" and nearly as good as raid, maybe..

I was thinking of just adding a second matching drive to the one that comes with it and Running Raid0.. This would be the cheapest method and loading times and what not should be worth the risk of drive failure woes... considering I backup everything I cherish, I do not worry of the failure risk.

I also will be using external hdd's via the onboard esata port for all my movies, so the only things I will store on the laptop is Music, Games, APs and maybe a few movies that I like to watch often such as "The bang over" "numb and number" and "She's out of my budget" .. I'm kidding, but I probably will keep only a few favs on the raid0 config just for convenience.

option B "Expensive" What are the benefits?

I have always wanted a SSD, but I would hope to have a 128gb+ model which would leave approx 65-70GB for games/aps. Then I would stick the 200GB over on the side and use it for 50gb music and the remainder for movies etc.

If I am not going to be doing anything other than light gaming, music , movies and "light" web surfing is it worth it to get an SSD?

This is what I mean by worth it..

With only a SSD and no secondary drive would battery life be a minimal or beneficial gain?

Will a SSD play nice with standard hdd on the same PC?

If you were me and you had the money to grab an SSD, would you and why?

Since this is a laptop and performance is going to be less than I am used to would a SSD seem more of an upgrade (performance wise) vs a 7200rpm raid0 hdd setup?

Lastly, What would be the average max price you would pay for a good condition, warrantied but used SSD @ 128gb?

If you think I should just buy a second hdd just for extra storage and not raid0 or SSD then please explain why?

Sorry for all the questions, I hope someone has time to answer some for me, I would be grateful!

Thanks!

P.s

I noticed the laptop has an extra PCIEx1 slot.. possibly for BT module or pciex1 ssd, do pciex1 ssd only offer temp storage?

 

[AsRock]

I'd go for a single SSD and a large WD black. And if you did go with 2 SSD's Intel recommend 16KB strip going by their raid software..

 

[mauriek]

i prefer single SSD if battery life is your priority and/or maybe use the second bay for old HDD to keep your data files, only go RAID if you need to move large number of data often..if you use the laptop only for light gaming, music, movie, internet then your RAID setup will be useless most of the time..

Cmiiw..as far as i know SSD consume less power than standard 7200RPM drive..but how much the differences if you change the regular drive with SSD, i think it will depend on your laptop. each laptop has different power consumption.

 

[shevanel]

I'm buying dark2099's 2 60GB SSD's.. so I guess I will now have to decide whether or not to set them up as raid0..

 

[ISSA2000]

get thew hybrid seagate ssd+hdd. (laytest version)

hdd+ ssd 500g 2.5"

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

ssd for os and apps and wd 1tb scorpio for storage