macadam4000

I had previously setup a RAID on my IBM T43 with the internal drive and a expansion bay drive. Both drives were set up as Dynamic with Windows XP PRO, and I allocated 60GB (all of the expansion drive) and 60GB from the main drive which had 80GB origanally into a single RAID Volume. Both drives were, are, at 7,200RPM. The benchmarks before and after were not too impressive, but some gain nonetheless.

My question is: I now have a second generation Dell XPS with no expansion bay hard drive capabilities and I wish to run a second drive just like the arrangement I had back with my T43. There is tons of free space inside my XPS, especially if I remove the PCMCIA slot reader. I was thinking of mounting my second drive litterally inside the unit and establishing a link between the main drive and the second. I found a IDE ribbon cable, about 6 inches long, that is 44 pin and has two femal tips (for the drives) and one male tip (for the system). It is in my beleif that 2.5" drives can be switched to either master or slave with 4 extra pins off to the side of the first 44, and with 2.5" drives operating just like regular 3.5" IDE drives, is it possable that the mainboard of a laptop supports two devices per one channel? Will the power consumption of two drives that are being shared on the same line short out the bus? Has anyone any experience at all with the above senario?

Lastly, and to further my own answer, there are adapters to convert a 44pin drive to 40 pin PC ribbions, and in that state it is possable to master and slave the two drives and make it work in a PC; but PCs support two devices per channel, do laptops? and again, what about the power?

Let me know... thank you.