hdd OS questions

[Musty Pie]

little bit of help please guys,

I never usually mess around with hard drives in my machine and currently only have 1 320GB WD drive in (model: WD3200AAKS) as my main OS drive for my machine (vista 64 bit ultimate)

Im looking at getting a better HDD to improve speed a little and would like some advise.

Would it be better to get for example: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

and just run it as 1x OS drive


or would it be better to get something like 2 of these and run a raid setup (striped?): http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-273-WD&tool=3

Any advise would be great many thanks

EDIT: I should mention difference in size is not a problem, i just want to increase my speed in windows for program opening/game loading etc

 

[Phunky Phish]

Raid will be quicker depending on how you will be implimenting it. The ICH9 and 10 chipsets are not bad for raid so running in Raid0 you should see an improvement over a single HDD.

The problem with raid is if 1 goes down or you damage the mobo and cannot replace it with like for like your raid is dead and all the info on it! But then a good backup will sort that.

For real speed get an SSD, but it costs! You might find a second hand one for less money, but the new ones are a lot better and dont suffer the controller issues of the early ones.

 

[Musty Pie]

Raid will be quicker depending on how you will be implimenting it. The ICH9 and 10 chipsets are not bad for raid so running in Raid0 you should see an improvement over a single HDD.

The problem with raid is if 1 goes down or you damage the mobo and cannot replace it with like for like your raid is dead and all the info on it! But then a good backup will sort that.

For real speed get an SSD, but it costs! You might find a second hand one for less money, but the new ones are a lot better and dont suffer the controller issues of the early ones.

Thanks for the reply. I do regular back ups to a 1TB external HDD (things that are important like pics etc) the only other thing is music (replaceable) and games (reinstall-able ) I might give a raid set up a go, would those hdd's be ok to do it? or would you suggest another model?

 

[Guest2]

Maybe an SSD for your OS or Velociraptor. Or RAID 0 SSD if u have money to spend/RAID 0 2 velociraptors.

I have this (or will have soon) this setup...

C 150gb Velociraptor OS and programs
D 1TB - Media
G old 250GB, A clone of C: that i run using Acronic clone software every 2 weeks
H 1TB external backup of D

I will move to SSD maybe next year when they have matured a bit, and/or i move from Windows XP to Windows 7 with new hardware