Hard Drive Configuration

[RWise]

Which of these setups would offer the best performance:

1 x 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 with 2 partitions (25% system, 75% storage)
1 x 150GB Western Digital Raptor (system), 1 x 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (storage)
2 x 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 in Raid 0 with 2 partitions (25% system, 75% storage)

I do a lot of downloading so the storage partition will be more or less continually accessed in the background while I continue to do other work/games.

Does anyone know of a site that has a sound file of the raptor drive in use compared to another more standard drive so I can get an idea myself how loud it is.

 

[Tarty]

If you're wanting a quiet drive when its being constantly accessed, you might want to look into a samsung spinpoint, generally concidered to be the quiest about.

Best performance would be the 2x 320, but if you value your data, you might want to back it up to something as with raid 0 you have 2x the chance of it all going.

Seeing as the single raptop 150gb is twice the price of any of the other drives, maybe you should look into getting two small drives to raid 0 then a storage drive such as the 500gb samsung ( for quietness) or WD AAKS drive for speed