Amazing hardware idea!

[Indybird]

Imagine this: dual 2.5" notebook drives (7200RPM, 8+MB Cache) in a 3.5" shell. They would each be connected to a single pcb single SATA output and regular SATA power. There is a switch on the PCB (or outside of the drive) that allows it to switch from hardware RAID 0 to RAID 1.
Remember you heard it here first...

Whaddya think?

-Indybird

[OvRiDe]

I think it would be really cool! There are SATA port multipliers available for eSATA connections, that may be useful in something of this nature. I don't recall seeing anything in a 2 port configuration, most I have seen are for 4 or 5 ports. Some do feature internal RAID adapters on the port multiplier as well as JBOD functionality. There are a few 3.5 inch units availabe with eSATA, USB, and/or Firewire, on the market already. Here is one I saw recently on Engadget for 2.5" drives and USB.

http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-product.jsp?prod_no=ARS-2212&type1_title=Storage%20Smart%20Mini&idno_no=230

I like your idea of having it small and able to fit inside the machine, and take up minimal room. I had looked into something like this ...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817332011

but it takes up 3 5.25" bays, but allows for 5 hot swappable SATA drives, and requires and external RAID controller, or software RAID.

of course the inspiration in my instance is...

The UDAT (http://www.mashie.org/casemods/udat1.html)

[crenn]

It's possible, but there would be an issue. Mainly someone switching from RAID0 to RAID1 without realizing and without backing up.

[J-Roc]

I think if you had some firmware or software support for switching then you wouldnt have people accidently erasing everything on the array. Do they make 7200rpm notebook drives? I'm not much of a laptop guy. I thought they were limited to 5200rpm to save power.

[crenn]

*holds up a Seagate 160GB 7.2kRPM 2.5" SATA drive* Does this answer your question?

[Indybird]

Maybe instead of a switch it could be a simple jumper on the bottom of the drive:

o o o (All open) = run as two separate drives
[o o]o = RAID 0
o[o o] = RAID 1

would that not be an instant seller? Its the worlds simplest RAID setup, it can be used for gaming or business and its in an industry standard form. Who wants to help me make this!?

-Indybird