Can an AR21S handle 12.5mm hard drives?

[jumbles1971]

I've run out of hard drive space and plan on upgrading at least one of the drives. I would quite like to fit a 1TB drive for a bit of future proofing but they are all 12.5mm deep and the current drive is 9.5mm. I've taken the hard drive bay cover off and it looks like it should handle it but I thought i'd ask just in case someone knows for sure.

thanks

[Blencogo · Accepted solution]

Hi Jumbles,

No, you need 9.5mm notebook drives.

The 12.5mm drives available have 3 platters and are too thick for notebooks.  They are mostly designed for external portable disc drives.

However, all is not lost.  Samsung have announced a new 1TB 9.5mm laptop drive with 2 platters - it may not have reached the shops yet but it is on the way.

Within a few months I would expect the main players (WD, Hitachi & Seagate) to be bringing their own 1TB  9.5mm drives to the market.

EDIT: I see they are available now!!!

http://www.dabs.com/products/samsung-1tb-spinpoint-m8-2-5--sata-3gb-s-5400rpm-8mb-9-5mm-7KWF.html

Message was edited by: Blencogo

[jumbles1971]

Sweet! That just went to the top of my wishlist!

thanks Blencogo

[stephanius]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think there are AR-Series models with a HDD-bay door that allows you to fit 12.5mm drives. I don't know off-hand which these are, but you can tell by the door having a ridge in them towards the unit's edge. I might be confusing this with the FZ-Series, for which this definitely applies. I can probably find out if you don't want to or cannot get the fancy 9.5mm drive.

[jumbles1971]

there is a ridge on the outside of the drive bay about 2/5 of the way in from the side of the computer with the bit nearest the edge being approx 3mm thinner. if possible I'd like to get the 12.5mm Toshiba drive (i replaced the original clicking fujitsu's with toshiba and then upgraded those with more toshiba's and never have a single problem with them)

Message was edited by: jumbles1971

Message was edited by: jumbles1971