On 8/6/2020 10:36 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
If I were one to use a laptop - which I most certainly do not -
I think that's why you don't consider it unthinkable to carry around
such a thing along with your laptop.
I carried around a 90 lb tool case everywhere for nearly 20 years.
I've carried luggables that weighed almost 20 lbs. I've lugged 60 lbs
of SCUBA gear all over creation. A laptop and a couple of small boxes
is nothing. I don't carry a laptop because it is nearly impossible to
get any work done on a laptop. If I did, I would certainly carry a full
sized keyboard - probably a roll-up, a decent mouse, and a power brick.
What you're suggesting looks like the following to me:
- I go to my favorite caf?? to work for the afternoon [ ah, the good ol'
days before covid! ]
I *NEVER* take work anywhere but work. When I eat, I eat. I don't
even answer my cell phone. When I sleep, I sleep, and ditto. When I
watch a movie, I watch a movie. 'No distractions, no matter what I am
doing. The only thing I do in the office other than work is drink
water. When I take a break, I go in the other room.
- I take out my laptop
Which of course, is dead. That's OK, though because I immediately get
out my power brick and plug in my laptop, and my phone, which is also
nearly dead. Then I get out my keyboard, then my mouse, then my
headphones.
- I start to wo.... oh no, wait, I forgot, I also have to:
- take out my RAID disk
Yep. Oh, how strenuous.
- plug it in
- notice that it needs power
- take out its power adapter
Nope, I just plug it into the same brick that powers the laptop and is
charging my phone.
- look around to see where on earth I'm going to plug it
- wonder why I bother carrying a laptop with a battery if my drive needs
a power outlet
Then I wonder why I am carrying around a laptop with a single minuscule
screen, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a place with glacial
internet, a lot of noise, and an HVAC system set at who knows what
temperature, when what is really needed is a system with two 32 inch
monitors, a minimum of 8 processors running at least 4GHZ, and 32G of
RAM. Why sit in such a place when I can sit in great comfort in a
padded chair where I control the cooling and all the sounds, and where I
can yell as loud as I like at vendors.
Oh, and I don't eat at cafe's. If I go out, it is to a restaurant, and
it is always with friends, or sometimes business associates.
I wouldn't carry the array around, however. It would sit either at
home or at work (one and the same, for me) and I would access it
through the internet.
So we're back at square one: your laptop wouldn't have a RAID drive and
neither your root partition nor your $HOME files would be protected
by RAID.
The root partition doesn't need to be. Simple backups are OK for that,
although if I did ever use a laptop for work, it would have a RAID 1
boot drive, just like the rest of my desktop computers. Plus, $HOME
would be on a RAID array separate from the / source device, just like my
other computers.
BTW, if you care about RAID and about having a laptop, there are many
good options out there for laptops that can take two internal drives
(either 2x 2??" or 2x M.2 or a mix of the two).
I know that. This does not prevent one from having an external array.
