I have 3 x 300gb Seagate Cheetah 15000 RPM drives... What is the best setup for them?

meathman 007

meathman 007

meathman 007

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Hi,

I have 3 x Seagate Cheetah 15000 RPM drives, Link

They are setup in the following PC, Link

My question is; what would be the best raid setup for these drives? I am looking at ways to improve performance, without having to go down the SSD route. (I am also getting a brand new motherboard replacement next week, so I figure it would be a good time to get the best out of my hardware while still in warranty)

There is room for another hard drive in my system... I am open to spending £60 or so to get a 1 or 2tb drive if that would help for backup purposes etc.

Please note I am a complete noob when it comes to RAID setup etc, so any links with instructions would be appreciated.

Thanks.
 
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It really depends upon what storage requirements you have, however with 3 drives I would:

RAID 0 two, using the third for pagefile / temp data (by modifying the environmental variables of windows) and for backup data (robocopy scripts). This would give you speed of RAID 0 of the core OS, a third spindle for writing the page file and temp directories to and some safety by important files (ie documents copied to single spindle) without wasting space of replicating unimportant files (you only copy what you want, documents, desktop).

RAID 0 isn't ideal, but you have enterprise class disks - just make sure you copy to the single drive what is important. Programs can be reinstalled - documents not so easy to get back...
 
@ ecksman: Thanks for the advice.

@ Krislord: I have advertised them on a local adverts site here in Ireland at €185 each. But no offers yet.

I am happy enough with their performance. Just want to get the best out of them...
 
Hey,

Think I have decided to go the following route, please let me know if any my assumptions are incorrect:

  • I am going to buy the following SSD: OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB I will install my OS on this and my programs etc. I am intending to use Windows Xp 64 bit - will this work ok on the above SSD?
  • I will use two of my Seagate Cheetah Drives in Raid 0 and use it for my music library etc
  • Try and sell one of Seagate Drives
  • In theory, my PC would become quieter as the majority of the time I will only be accessing the SSD for programs and not utilizing my Seagate drives?
  • Should the SSD work in my PC without any problems... Spec here: Link

Any advice appreciated.
 
only one thing... if it's for your music library... why do you want RAID 0? You do not need speed, better to stick them in RAID 1 so you would have a backup... with RAID 0 if one fails, you lost all your music.
 
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