Hello everyone,

I am on the market for a high-performance laptop, on which I will be
running virtual machines (VMWare), probably mostly two at a time. So,
RAM and Disk performancs are of utter importance. New laptops are
equipped with DDR2 ram, which is fine. But, as always, the problem is
the disk performance, which, even though SATA, is apparently always at
5400 RPM. I thought using external disks (7200, 10000 RPM) would be an
option, which should be possible over an external SATA connection.
However, there are no such laptops, apparently (Or ??). Is there a
solution for this? Docking-stations with external SATA connections?
PCMCIA cards? Other cards ??
Any pointers are deeply appreciated.
Many Thanks in advance,
-arifi

arifi wrote:
More likely ExpressCard slots for any notebook with a SATA drive. PC
Card slots are going away. You might be better off with a small form
factor PC that you can customize to accomplish your VM requirements, if
portability is not too high on your list of requirements.

Q

Actually, I have such a PC, but having to have a monitor to wherever I
drag it, proved to be hard to manage. Portability is important, since
I frequently work at customer sites, do demos, etc.

Would an ExpressCard with external sata connectors give performance
comparable to internal or external SATA disks of a desktop system ??


On Mar 2, 2:46 pm, Quaoar <qua...@marcabfleet.com> wrote:

arifi wrote:
My Core 2 Duo Thinkpad T60P (T7600, 4GB RAM) shipped from the factory with
an Hitachi 100GB 7200RPM HD and will take a second SATA HD in an adapter in
place of the optical drive. I presently have a Seagate 7200RPM 160GB SATA HD
as a second HD in my system.

There are many, _many_ laptops from other manufacturers with similar or
better specs including the ability to use now commonly available 7200RPM
SATA HDs up to 160GB.

I'm not aware of any laptops that offer an external SATA connector, although
my system can use a docking station that allows use of an additional HD for
a total of three on the laptop's SATA bus.
--
James

Visit the Thinkpad Forums
http://forum.thinkpads.com

On 2 Mart, 17:26, "JHEM" <J...@ESAD.SPAMMERS.thinkpads.com> wrote:
Ahh !! Thank you thank you!! I looked at the T60, had not realized the
existence of this model.
)

Now it's time to do some accounting ...

arifi wrote:
Engadget has an example:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/17/r...a-expresscard/


Q

"arifi" <Arifi.Koseoglu@gmail.com> writes:

Have you considered combining a laptop with FireWire connection and an
external Firewire disk? The external disk could be a RAID array for
higher performance.

I don't know how FireWire compares to SATA in terms of maximum
throughput available and amount of driver overhead. But compatible
hardware is certainly more available, and people use hardware like this
for video editing so the performance can't be too shabby.

Dave

I doubt you can find any external solutions (even with Card) faster than
internal HD (even the 5400 RPM ones). Internal HD has DMA and much wider
data passage.