New system drive(s) wanted

ChrisD. · 5 Sep 2008 at 11:29

Hi all.

At the end of this month I will have a little bit of money saved for a new OS drive setup. Budget is around £300.

Backup will be taken care off so I don't mind running RAID0.

The sytem drive is to hold Vista Ultimate 64, about 5 games, Office 2007, PS and some other apps. All user data will be stored on my WD 640AAKS drives.

I am very biased toward WD Drives as whenever I've had an issue in the past their RMA procedure has been second to none.

Suggestions please? 2xVelociraptors 150GB in RAID0? One single 300GB version? Or three 74GB versions with a view to adding a fourth all striped? As I said, my OS drive get ghosted every two nights so I'm really not bothered about running a RAID setup with such a high risk. I want the most performance possible for the best price. Required for gaming, PARing, RARing, Burning etc.

ChrisD. · 5 Sep 2008 at 11:30

Just to add, I'm not overly keen on SSD at the moment.

ChrisD. · 5 Sep 2008 at 18:36

Anyone?

PhillyDee · 5 Sep 2008 at 19:07

I would either wait for the 150Gb Velociraptor, or go for the 300Gb VR. Unless you want RAID, then just Raid the Velociraptors. Depends how much you want to spend.

jimmy29 · 5 Sep 2008 at 21:43

RAIDed velociraptors would be pretty sweet, would best any SSD for read/write. Dunno how loud they are though if that bothers you.

siege2 · 5 Sep 2008 at 22:18

about Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB

Not so quick

Reviewed by: ksdp37
If you've got money to spend, wait for the Intel Solid States Drives.

Each apparently offers 240mbs read and 170mbs write (entreprise drives). They'll blow the raptors/veloci raptors away! You'll need 3 - 4 of these drives to match that performance!

Can you imagine the Intel SSD's on a stripe array?

PhillyDee · 5 Sep 2008 at 23:46

Not loud at all. Quite quiet.

Snograt · 6 Sep 2008 at 00:20

A big Spinpoint F1 (or two), in my opinion. Not much slower than the VRaps now.

PhillyDee · 6 Sep 2008 at 05:09

But the seek times are double . . . . . .
VR are the fastest Desktop SATA drives. (Hope I said the right

)

ChrisD. · 6 Sep 2008 at 10:14

Samsung warrenty puts me off. I'm not bothered about noise as my speakers are nearly always on blasting out tunes or games. How much for the Intel SSD drives?

John24 · 6 Sep 2008 at 11:22

MilanoChris said:
How much for the Intel SSD drives?

No prices yet.

If your willing to buy SSD I strongly recomend Mtron, have one myself.

ChrisD. · 6 Sep 2008 at 11:48

John24 said:
If your willing to buy SSD I strongly recomend Mtron, have one myself.

I do have a max budget!

jimmy29 · 6 Sep 2008 at 14:31

I'm well chuffed with my Mtron as well, but if I was to buy an SSD today it would be one of those OCZ V2s.

John24 · 6 Sep 2008 at 14:37

MilanoChris said:
I do have a max budget!

Depends on the size you need, you could be under budget and still faster than a veloci.

If price per GB is a concern you should either get a lesser SSD like an OCZ or a veloci.

ChrisD. · 6 Sep 2008 at 14:44

I think I will go for 2 150GB VelociRaptors. Comes in at £260 ish so £40 spare to go toward some new RAM.

ChrisD. · 6 Sep 2008 at 14:45

John24 said:
Depends on the size you need, you could be under budget and still faster than a veloci.

If price per GB is a concern you should either get a lesser SSD like an OCZ or a veloci.

How many GB can I get for £300? And will it be better then two V-Raptors in RAOD0?

I don't care about £ per GB, as long as I can fit my OS, BioShock, BF2, COD4, Office 2007 Enterprise, GRID, PS and a few other progs on and still have headroom I'm happy. No idea how large my C: is atm as I'm away from home and on my Lappy.

ChrisD. · 8 Sep 2008 at 15:21

Anyone on the above?

I'm keen to get a list together of what I'll be ordering!