Best Hard Drive setup for next rig ?

[Jaap74]

Hi,

A few questions, hope I don't ramble !

My next rig will be built when Conroe comes out and basically I want to know what would be my best drive configuration bearing in mind the following :

1) gaming isn't my biggest priority (but I'll still get a top end graphics card for when I do)
2) Ihave over 25,000 MP3's and I want the quickest access possible to them and video files...... I want to do a search in Windows Media Player (for a band or song etc) and I want the quickest response possible...... at present I sometimes wait up to 15 seconds plus, dependent of course upon what other applications are running.

So which would be best for me :

1 Raptor for the OS
plus
2 hard drives in RAID0 for my multimedia files

OR

stick with the current setup and just a RAID0 array for everything (no Raptor) ??

money isn't really a problem so I want performance as the priority........... I'm guessing the Raptor plus RAID option will be best ??

and a side question : should Vista have a better "search engine" (for want of the technical term) and better responsiveness than XP ?

many thanks !
Jaap

 

[easyrider]

A raptor for windows is a good idea and a two single fast drives for storage.
not worth the hassled of raid 0 and you could lose everything.

I have a raptor 150gig for windows,apps and games,

amd four 250gig drives for storage of media files and backup images.


Why are you using windows media player to play your mp3's?
winamp is better and has a far faster library search system.

 

[SiriusB]

A raptor for windows is a good idea and a two single fast drives for storage.
not worth the hassled of raid 0 and you could lose everything.

I have a raptor 150gig for windows,apps and games,

amd four 250gig drives for storage of media files and backup images.


Why are you using windows media player to play your mp3's?
winamp is better and has a far faster library search system.

I agree with easyrider. RAID0 really isn't worth it imo. Apart from a small increase in performance it is practically a gimmick. One drive so much as hiccups and ALL your data could end up in the great big hard disk in the sky.

SiriusB

 

[easyrider]

I agree with easyrider. RAID0 really isn't worth it imo. Apart from a small increase in performance it is practically a gimmick. One drive so much as hiccups and ALL your data could end up in the great big hard disk in the sky.

SiriusB

Yup,

I played with two 36gig raptors in a raid 0 stripe and I had nothing but hassle.
Floppy drives to install raid drivers when installing windows etc...and eventually the array went iffy causing corrupt boot files.

Sold the two raptors and got a single 150 gig raptor.Much faster easier to manage and quieter.

The only time when I can see a raid 0 stripe of use is when having two big drives striped together as a scratch disk when editing.Nothing gets stored on it permanantly just the temp video/audio files for the process of fast access and then burning the master to DVD.

For anything else a single drive with nice ammounts of cache is better and safer in the long run.

 

[Jaap74]

I have, and will have, a dedicated backup drive so the increased possibility of losing the drives/data in RAID isn't really a worry.....