Samsung is the first disk drive vendor to launch a 1TB, internal, 2-platter, 2.5-inch hard drive, leap-frogging the other four HDD suppliers. Western Digital has a 3-platter 1TB 2.5-inch drive, the Scorpio Blue, but its 3-platters and 12.5mm z-height measurement means it can't fit in a standard 9.5mm z-height drive bay as the …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections

This topic is closed for new posts.

Tuesday 14th June 2011 10:05 GMT kiwi8mail

Odd price differential between internal and external drives

Is there a mechanical difference between a drive intended to be sold as an external drive, and one designed to be installed into a laptop?

In some cases its seems not – for example, last month I bought a 640GB Seagate external drive, cracked open the case, cloned my laptop Ubuntu install onto it, and slotted it into my laptop – it worked fine.

But can someone tell me why for the same price of that 640GB external drive, the biggest internal laptop drive I could get from Maplin was a 120GB drive?

0 0
1. Tuesday 14th June 2011 11:02 GMT Haku
  
  Why do they charge more for an external drive?
  
  Because they can.
  
  Anyone who's knows a little about the main parts which make up a computer knows that you buy an internal drive and an enclosure if you want an external drive because you get to choose the bits you want and can save a bundle, only those who know squat about computers or don't want the inconvenience of making sure the drive will work in the enclosure buys external drives.
  
  0 0
  1. Tuesday 14th June 2011 11:17 GMT kiwi8mail
    
    Why do they charge more for an external drive?
    
    But the point my posting was making was that it is actually more economic to do the opposite of what you suggest - if you want a replacement laptop drive, its far cheaper (in Malpins at least) to buy an external drive and crack open the case, than it is to buy a designated internal laptop drive.
    
    The only thing I can think of is economies of scale - the manufacturers of external drives can buy these components in huge numbers, rather than individual people buying single internal drives at a time.
    
    0 0
2. Tuesday 14th June 2011 11:17 GMT BristolBachelor
  
  Did you say Craplin?
  
  That's what we started to call them. They used to be a good electonics supplier, but when they started selling electric showers and then all sort of other crap, they went down hill faster than Greece's credit rating.
  
  Find another supplier for HDD. But check how they package them (just sent back 4* 2TB disks to Amazon that had just been loose in a box; 1 was dead on arrival, 2 more failed in the next 2 days, then the 4th started playing up...)
  
  1 0
  1. Tuesday 14th June 2011 12:53 GMT kiwi8mail
    
    Maplin
    
    Yes, but their staff know about two million times more about computers than the staff at PC World!
    
    0 0
    1. Tuesday 14th June 2011 13:25 GMT Steven Raith
      
      2,000,000 x 0 = ?
      
      No explanation required. ;-)
      
      2 0
3. Tuesday 14th June 2011 21:33 GMT Craig McAllister
  
  Honest Question
  
  Who buys computer bits at Maplin?
  
  I mean... honestly!
  
  0 0
Tuesday 14th June 2011 10:24 GMT jabuzz

Toshiba clearly don't count then

The MK1059GSM is another 1TB three platter drive, and Seagate have their ST91000641NS drive aka Constellation.2 which is a 7200rpm job. Contary to the article span are listing it with a price and three day availability along with a link to specification sheet on the Seagate website. I would point out that the Constellation line is depreciated for the Constellation.2 line which is probably why you could only get 160GB and 500GB drives.

Admittedly both are 12.5mm height drives but, poor background research/knowledge for this article I am afraid.

0 1
1. Tuesday 14th June 2011 11:02 GMT BristolBachelor
  
  INTERNAL
  
  Says it on the title of the article too. Normally, 12.5mm drives cannot be used internally, so the first 9.5mm high (2-platter) drive with 1TB would be the first normal internal drive.
  
  Now my beast of a laptop can apparantly take 12.5mm drives, so does that mean I should be able to get a 1.5TB 3-platter drive for it soon (for when I am away from network?).
  
  2 0
Tuesday 14th June 2011 23:15 GMT Greg Glawitsch

By the way, Seagate also has a 4 platter, 1.5TB 2.5" drive...

...only available as an external model. It's is (gasp!) 14.8mm thick, thus won't fit into the vast majority of notebook computers, but it **will** fit into these Supermicro or Chenbro rack-mount enclosures that have 24 disks side by side (2.5" disks, of course).

Of course, buying 24 of these 1.5TB drives would be a tad expensive...

Anyway, I can't wait till they make a 14.8mm 2.5" drive out of four 500GB platters, for a total of 2TB.

0 0
Monday 20th June 2011 15:19 GMT Maxbash

1 TB 2.5 in drive are too tall for laptops right now

The 1TB Constellation has been out for awhile, but it's 15mm tall, so it will only fit server enclosers. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/products/enterprise-ssd-hdd/constellation/constellation-2/

I have a few 12.5 mm 1 TB drives from WD and Samsung that fit my 5.25" raid encloser bay, but there still too tall for most laptops

I'm sure a nice even 1 TB is welcome for laptops

0 0