2x 500GB OR 1x 1TB ??? (sata)

JoeCooper · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:13

i dont know if i should just get a single TB or 2 x 500gb and have them mirrored raid 0?

Will_3rd · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:19

The price of 1TB drives is prohibitively high at the moment, you would probably get better value with two 500GB drives.

james.miller · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:22

2x500's. dont bother raiding them

Kobrakai · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:22

2x500GB. Faster speeds (Raid 0) and lower costs.

Raid 0 is striped by the way. If you want mirrored go for Raid 1.

badbob · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:22

I'd rather have 3 x 1TB drives, than 6 x 500GB. However the former will cost 3.2x more!

JoeCooper · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:26

well the site i found (much cheaper than OC but cant say other wise i get banned again) sell 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM [ SPECIAL OFFER ] for £145 or i can get 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM [ SPECIAL OFFER ] for £125... which would you say is better?

Pulse · 21 Oct 2007 at 15:53

they are both pretty much exatly the same, but people have complained about some barracuda 7200.10 coming with noisy motors, its a bit hit and miss, but consider the WD are also cheaper i would have them

james.miller · 21 Oct 2007 at 16:00

aaks's are faster than the 7200.10's anyway, they are the better drives especially if they are cheaper

JoeCooper · 21 Oct 2007 at 16:12

orderd the WD drives, they seem to last much longer than most... now i dont know how to setup my system when they come! i will have 2x identicle 500GB drives and a 250GB drive... i have loads of games i play all the time, and some films, music etc that dont get used that often...

i want to install win vista and XP and have heard to keep them both on one drive but split partition's so the drive should run faster when only half is in use..

so i was thinking 125gb of 250 drive for xp, the other 125 for vista.. but doesnt that kinda spoil the point of having raid 0 just for media and games not for OS?

sosrandom · 21 Oct 2007 at 18:03

I think you would still need to access the os hard drive when running programs and this might slow you down a lot

JoeCooper · 21 Oct 2007 at 18:08

hmm... i will put the 2 drives to raid 0 1TB drive... winvista and winxp on the 250drive split 125 each way... and keep the 1TB storage

sosrandom · 21 Oct 2007 at 18:18

and install programs on the raid,
You done realy need to speed for storage realy or raid at all if your not going to using it much

Kobrakai · 21 Oct 2007 at 18:20

Raid 0 for storage is a bad idea. It doubles the chances of losing everything. If one drive fails or if raid screws up you lose the data from both.

Greenlizard0 · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:02

james.miller said:
aaks's are faster than the 7200.10's anyway, they are the better drives especially if they are cheaper

I'm not entirely sure that he's talking about aaks drives, there's 3/4 different 500GB Sata II models out there..

musicman53 · 22 Oct 2007 at 13:44

JoeCooper said:
i dont know if i should just get a single TB or 2 x 500gb and have them mirrored raid 0?

You will not have 2X 500Gb.
You will have 2X 465.76 or close as.
Why?
Because formatted size is not 500Gb.
To get 500GB after formatting you would need and extra 34Gb extra before formatting.
Even a 1TB will not be 1TB after formatting.