There are two hardware changes (from the PowerBooks) that make me think of some hackabilities for the MacBook Pro's. . .
The first factor is the change to the SATA (serial) harddrive interface. Meaning you can have multiple harddrives in serial configuration. In a notebook you could say "so what, there's no room for more than one drive". Except what about the 1" harddrives? Are any of those configed in the SATA format? If so, you might be able to fit four in the space of a standard 2.5" x 9mm HD space(?).
The second factor is the new UltraSlimline size of the optical drive, ostensibly used to make this machine thinner than the PowerBooks. Is the space use maximized? or is there a little more airflow around this thing? (Read "hack-space".)
Mutant_Pie
(BTW when they introduce the HiDefBlueRay CD Burners into the MacBook Pro Line, I think that it will be time for me to upgrade. . . ah computer lust 2007, here I come!)
I meant to write DVD burners, but you knew what I meant. . .
well... considering that the new SuperDrive is a downgrade from the ones in the last revision... from 8X DL DVD±R to 4 X SL DVD±R. The reason for the downgrade is that they couldn't fit that drive in the space they designed... so they used the thinner SL drive. If they had any space left, I'm sure they would have used the DL drive... (how much thicker could it be?). I doubt there is any space there.
But the price per gig is going to suck, and likely the speed too. Don't really see the point. Replacing the optical with a second SATA drive and RAIDing them might be more viable.
whats the likely hood that the motherboard has multiplw hdd capability? let alone RAID. are their any RAID pcmcia cards out yet?
Wikipedia had this to say on multiple drives:
So no. On the other hand...
Future hack?
There must be Cardbus SATA cards around, and Disk Utility could do the RAIDing.