The Studio 14 comes equipped with an eSata port. Most new lappies do.

That will likely be a few more years in the making, and will be another couple before they get affordable. Your best bet would be in 2015 or later. And by then if the conventional HDD is still around, they'll be having capacities of up till 10TB. More than most people use in an entire lifetime.

As for the SSD market, Intel's x25-m offers probably the best bang for buck factor. Though OCZ is starting to give them a run for their money.

The best bang for buck SSD in Malaysia is Intel's X-25m G2 which supports the TRIM command thus making it somewhat impervious to the notorious SSD slowdown.

Another good competitor, if you have the money for it, is OCZ's Indilinx based Vertex/Vertex Turbo series.

You don't need to defrag a SSD. It's because of the way the SSD stores data as opposed to a regular HDD. I.e. Flash based data versus conventional magnetic dots, so to speak.

Probably it ain't being sold in Malaysia. Here in the States we have every variety from 500GB to 1TB models.

Why don't you judge for yourself? Tom's Hardware has some pretty comprehensive charts detailing the performance of different HDDs.

Er, I don't think the read speeds of a SSD is affected by fragmentation at all. What happens when fragmentation or data clutters occur is the general degradation of write performance, random and sequential alike. It's because of how the SSD handles write operations with it having to clear entire used blocks before rewriting the new data. Read speeds on the other hand don't change by much, if at all, along the entire lifespan of a SSD. Though the problem with cluttered SSDs should be solved now that Windows 7 is out and supporting the TRIM command which allows the SSDs controller to actually delete data when it is required as opposed to your OS merely flagging said data as deleted.

Also, why do you need so much storage for your SSD? Wouldn't a 80GB SSD plus a 1TB HDD suffice for all your applications?

On Newegg, the 80GB retail model costs $299 while its 160GB counterpart is $659. If Malaysian prices are similar, then you'll have your answer. But the problem is, I cant seem to find a single shop listing the 160GB model's retail price.

Er, I think anyone seriously considering a SSD would have come across that recommendation before. A slightly more advanced version encompasses the relocation of your entire user profile on a separate HDD to further save space.

True, but all those random writes are bound to clog up your SSD in no time which would drastically reduce its performance. Until Intel sorts out its TRIM command, this is gonna be one big headache.

Also running CCleaner without the TRIM command is useless. It'll simply make your OS flag the temporary files as deleted without actually passing down that command to the SSD controller meaning your files wont get physically deleted anyway.

In terms of app loading times, you'll definitely see a boost from a speedy 10K RPM HDD, but not as much as the performance boost you'll get from any decent SSD. Other than the aforementioned loading times, a VRaptor doesn't really give any other substantial benefits that would be had from getting a better CPU.

No. Using more RAM or a better processor is more likely to give you the performance boost you desire.

And when comparing the 150GB VRaptor to the similarly priced OCZ Agility 30GB the differences in flash based memory access times will become painfully apparent.

I was making the comparison because they were similarly priced. But heck, theoretically, even if you just install your OS on the SSD and put everything else on your HDD, it would still give better performance than the VRaptor.

Many complete system manufacturers have been using HDDs from OEMs such as Samsung and Hitachi for some time now.

I don't have any personal experience with a Samsung drive, but it does seem to be an extremely popular choice here in the States. In fact their new F3 is all the rage with system builders right now. At least those I know of or read about.

Even a basic 2.5" 30GB SSD is so bloody expensive. Mind speculating how much a 3.5" 90GB one will cost?

I think the current 2.5" form factor is just right for SSDs. Once capacities start to explode, we could see the advent of 3.5" drives instead. On the other hand, chip shrinking could stop that from happening altogether.

Which retailer is selling that? Mind giving us a link?

You'll need to identify the product numbers. The 1TB version is labeled HD103SJ while its 500GB counterpart is HD502HJ.

By the way, I recall reading a someone say that C-Zone is selling both models in question. You should also be able to locate them in LYN Garage Sales section.

I couldn't find the 1TB model there too. A quick peek at Newegg solved that problem.

That is because due to the limitations of a physical drive head, your seek times will never actually improve by epic proportions with a RAID array.

$900 for a 80GB drive? Pass.

Besides, the only real benefit I see with flash based memory is their minuscule seek times. Leave the sequential transfers to a good ol' HDD.