Notebook with HDD + SSD.

Space is tight at the compound (2 br apt). Time to downgrade to a notebook. I've been spoiled by SSDs but I need more space than that. How can I figure out which notebooks will allow me to install a second drive? I'm willing to remove the dvd drive and go with an esata optical drive if that makes sense, but it's really hard to figure out which models will allow this. So far I've figured out that the Dell XPS/Alienware 17 will let me do this.

The Alienware M18x allows this as well.. I use an SSD for boot and a HD for storage.

I recall a few MSI gaming laptops as well with dual drives.. quick search on Amazon should show you a few others.

TheGameguru wrote:

quick search on Amazon should show you a few others.

That's my problem, I can't figure out what to search for.

I've tried "second drive bay" and "second drive" but those weren't useful.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

That link should work.. I just did a filter for any laptop that could possibly have dual HD's..

Just a little FYI here, you should not go for alienware, because you are mostly paying for the brand and logo. not really the parts inside.. The quality of the laptop is not always justified for its price either, I have heard alot of horror storries regarding countless issues and multiple times wich people hat sendt it in for support, and when it came back agin there was yet another problem with it.

Yes but whatever floats your boat, although i would not reccomend alienware as a reliable company or pc manufacturer. You should check out Sager-notebooks instead, I've heard they are decent.

And GL with your purchase!

We've had a number of complaints here about Sager, Waaper. Given the poor experience our small userbase seems to have had, I'm rather wary of recommending them.

You've probably considered this, but just in case you haven't: I'm pretty happy with my ssd-only laptop with an external hdd for the bulk of my storage.

I've purchased and owned several Alienware Laptops over the last 3-4 years and I've been very happy with them.. granted I don't keep laptops that long but my Alienware M14x has been tortured tested pretty good as I use it for 10-15 hours a day for just about a year now (I got it in 4/2011) and its still going strong.

My next laptop is 100% going to be another M14x if/when it gets the Sandy Bridge update with a Kepler Mobile GPU. Unless Razer updates their Blade with a Kepler GPU then I might get that instead.

What's your budget?

I have a 17" notebook from a Clevo reseller (Sager's are actually Clevo's) called Malibal. This thing is an absolute beast.

spent a good 2 months doing research on the NotebookReview forums. These people know their stuff.

Originally, I was considering a 15" (And there are 15" laptops that will hold an SSD and HDD but you will have no optical drive) but decided on a 17" as I was basically looking for a desktop replacement.

I had ordered a similar laptop with an ATI 6990 card (which had just come out) and was like $150 additional which was a bargain, however after receiving it and doing initial tests, the card was running around 105 degrees Fahrenheit which is well above the operating specs of the card. I took screenshots and documented my experience and contacted Malibal. They were very apologetic and shocked that the laptop had been sent to me in this condition.

After some discussion with Malibal, they chose to do lots of upgrades for little to no cost.

They upgraded my screen to a 3D capabale, matte 120Hz 72% NTSC screen which is indescribably gorgeous. They also upgraded the video card to an nVidia 580M GTX which is the best mobile card available, bumed the RAM from 1333mhz to 1600mhz RAM, gave me a Blu-Ray burner (I had originally ordered a Blue-Ray player), and gave me free overnight shipping.

The laptop is unbranded too which is also cool. Stealth black.

So right now I have an Intel 510 120GB SSD2 as my primary drive, a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB as my secondary drive (I bought this separate from NewEgg), and the Blu-Ray burner.

I'm incredibly happy with this laptop and with the service I received. I recommend going on NotebookReview forums and researching the laptop you want. There are also lots of Clevo/Sager resellers that participate on those forums and who extend lots of freebies to people.

This quote is the final result. It looks like they charged me for the components but they didn't. They reduced the base price of the laptop to offset the freebies they gave me. Laptop shows $1099 as base price when it was actually $1599 base price. So about $500 in freebies not to mention free overnight shipping due to their mistake.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/xb0WT.jpg)

I finally pulled the trigger on this. I ended up with a lenovo T530. I wanted something solid since this will be my main computer.

The NVS 5400m is a bit anemic, but I don't have much time for gaming anyways (6 month old twins). It has an msata slot, so I'll be picking up a 120gb to 256gb msata ssd to stick in there and make my primary drive. This way I can keep my hard drive and the optical drive.

I have a new Dell 7720 (I7 version) but it's a little on the big side at 17.3". It fit the budget and the selection here isn't great. It has a GT650m which is somewhere close to the power of a GTX 550 TI. The GTX 660m is about 10% faster. I would have prefered to get one of the Asus with the GTX 670m but if they are offered here they are generally overpriced. The other contender was an Asus N56VZ which has similar specs but it's a 15.6 laptop. I always thought 17" is too big but after I got it it's surprisingly comfy even on the lap and I also noticed the screen is "too small" after I got used to a 25.5" ;).

BreechLoad wrote:

I finally pulled the trigger on this. I ended up with a lenovo T530. I wanted something solid since this will be my main computer.

Love the Lenovo T-series. For anything other than gaming, a Lenovo is the only PC laptop I want anything to do with. Either a T-series or one of those awesome X-series ones that are light and have batteries that last forever.

My mobile devices are all Macs at the moment, but I am jealous of the Lenovos.