Dual drive V. Single drive Notebooks

The Dell I am thinking might be the most suitable has 2 dual drives, whilst the others 1 drive.

What does this mean? Are there any performance issues? Any negative/positive impacts?

Dual Drives? Almost every laptop has a CD/DVD drive, most can write the CD/DVD as well. Almost every laptop has a Harddrive, very important.

Some dell laptops have the ability to remove the CD/DVD drive, and slot in a second hard drive for extra storage. However it is easier and cheaper to obtain a Laaaarge external USB hard drive (plugs in via cable) instead of losing the CD/DVD drive.

Is this what you mean by dual drives? Or do you mean dual core?

Ummm, I think it was dual hard drives....

If they're set up as a SCSI RAID I'd be happy to have em, otherwise a single large one is all someone really needs. Why spend money on whats unliky to be used to full capacity?

and adds weight to the laptop

quote:Originally posted by swaggie

The Dell I am thinking might be the most suitable has 2 dual drives, whilst the others 1 drive.

What does this mean?

It's just a piece of jargon to keep the punters confused

The correct term is "Dual Spindle". It just means Hard Disk + Internal DVD drive whereas Single Spindle is with an external DVD drive.

I've never heard of a laptop having dual Hard Disks, because space is always at a premium and better spent on extra battery capacity. Solid State Drives (Flash) are the latest trend although it costs huge $$$ to get a decent capacity (more than 64GB) at present. Look for that situation to change in the next year or so.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is mainly used in high end servers, and high powered workstations. It is basically multiple disks which are accessed in tricky ways to provide backup redundancy, increased space or improve access times.

These used to be the norm when the drive sizes were small,

In modern PCs, the drives these days are extra fast, and huuuuge.

In a laptop? No.

I will post a link later to the one I think was sounding along the lines of what I needed (but geese how would I really know?).

Welcome all feedback.

dellstore04.dell.com.au/public/cart/conf...rd_id=581619&sr_no=2

'tis the one. has 2 hard drives 2 x 160GB SATA hard drive...

hmmm...so's you can run your battery down twice as fast?

In a RAID-1 configuration disks each hold identical data. If one goes toes up, the odds are astronomical that the other one will fail at the same time, so you've still got all your data. But it's not something I"d ever spec for a laptop. Get a good-sized single disk and make your backups to an external device (another computer, an external drive, Amazon S3, etc.) - and if someone pinches the laptop or it falls in the ditch, you've still got your data.

1x 160 Gig is plenty of space unless you're a BitTorrenter and download a lot of movies rather than buy DVDs. You only need one of those disks, it sounds like something specced for a travelling salesman who needs tons of manuals and tech specs of his companies products all in high def data files like big PDFs.

So its probably not for me then....

I was planning on loading pre purchased DVD's rather than download anything for small person to watch in the bach during wet season, or in the evening...

I have to tell you that I read a lot of info on different specs today between Dell and HP/compaq, as well as some that Dell had on offer elsewhere, and none of it is known to me, nor is easy to compare, and I am totally confused.
I don't turn over my equipment all that often, so I want a system that is going to cop a long usage and lifetime.

I would be happy if someone could just point me in the way of saying I neeed, this, that and the other for my requirements.... please.[8D] or at least, what I should look for at a bare minimum.

quote:Originally posted by swaggie

I would be happy if someone could just point me in the way of saying I neeed, this, that and the other for my requirements.... please.[8D] or at least, what I should look for at a bare minimum.

Here's my 2c worth:

* Display: 14" or 15" Widescreen
* CPU: Intel Core2 Duo Mobile (better battery life than AMD)
* RAM: 1GB minimum
* Hard Disk: 100GB minimum
* DVD Writer built in
* Wireless: WiFi built in
* Operating System: Windows XP Pro preferred, Vista second choice if you are forced into it [V]

Those are the essentials Swaggie, anything else is just icing on the cake.

Other features such as a Memory Card Reader for Digital Cameras may be nice, but not essential as you can always download via USB.

Wyseyes: Anything else I have missed?

Looks good so far...

Swaggie wants to add Bluetooth, and it is usually easier to have it built-in.
Most have standard 56k modem, network, USB ports etc.
I have found a $20 USB memory card reader in the laptop bag works well.

many thanks for the help and shortlist. I will print it off and keep it near when searching through the sites...

Will let you know how I get on. Cheers!