RAID in the MacBook Pro?

[Benjamindaines]

Am I the only one that wants to see a RAID / dual hard drive option in the MacBook Pro? So many PC manufactures are doing this. I think it would be great to order a MacBook Pro with 2x 200GB hard drives linked together for a total of 400GBs, or you could have them mirror each other. Does anybody else agree with me on this or is it just a silly idea?

 

[CanadaRAM]

And where would the second drive fit?

 

[Benjamindaines]

And where would the second drive fit?

Eh Apple will figure that out somehow.

 

[koobcamuk]

I half like the idea, but I thought that a RAID was two backups copying each other... i.e. you have one user drive and 1 backup (with a copy of that too).

 

[TheStu]

I half like the idea, but I thought that a RAID was two backups copying each other... i.e. you have one user drive and 1 backup (with a copy of that too).

Strictly speaking RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks... but it doesn't always have to be redundant

RAID 0 is striping, so the OS treats 2+ drives as one. This method does exhibit a slight performance increase
RAID 1 is mirroring, everything on drive 0 is duplicated in real time onto drive 1
RAID 10 is a combination of the first 2, so you have, say... 4 drives. You mirror them in pairs, and then run said pairs in striped.

RAID 5 is used for 3+ identical drives. You get (n-1) * capacity, where n is the number of drives in use. So if you have 3 500GB drives, you get 1TB of usable space. However, the advantage here is that an entire drive can fail, and the array is still usable. All your data is still there. However, you will want to replace that drive as quickly as you can. Once one drive fails, another failure is statistically not far away

 

[squeeks]

Eh Apple will figure that out somehow.

hehe, you are a funny guy

have you even looked inside a mbp before? its amazing they can fit ONE harddrive in there

 

[TimJim]

You can take out the optical drive and add a second one.OptiBay

 

[squeeks]

You can take out the optical drive and add a second one.OptiBay

now THAT is nifty

 

[Benjamindaines]

hehe, you are a funny guy

have you even looked inside a mbp before? its amazing they can fit ONE harddrive in there

Haha yes, I've seen it but I'm sure they could find some way of shrinking things down to get it to fix.

You can take out the optical drive and add a second one.OptiBay

Thats a pretty good idea but I need my optical drive, plus I value my warranty.