Some advice please!

jac705 · 17 Dec 2008 at 18:38

I am looking to upgrade my hard drive setup to increase performance.
I currently have a 500GB Samsung Spinpoint and a 320 Seagate Barracuda with no RAID and my primary installation on the 500GB, with the other drive being used to sometimes install additional OSs or just for backup.

I have been looking into some options:
1. A RAID 0 setup with my current drives. (not sure if my mobo RAID software will be up to the job?)
2. Buying an SSD for primary installation and keeping the current drives for backup.
3. Buying a 150gb raptor for primary installation since I have not heard very good things about SSDs that are not in RAID setup.

My budget for the job is around £100-£150 exVAT and I would appreciate any advice.
Thanks in advance

jimmy29 · 17 Dec 2008 at 20:02

RAIDing your current drives would mean losing the extra 180GB of space on the larger disk, even Intel's Matrix RAID doesn't let you recover the un-raided space.
I would wait for the new OCZ SSDs that OcUK have on pre-order, for your budget you could have 2 in RAID 0 which would fly.

jac705 · 17 Dec 2008 at 20:09

Losing the extra space wouldnt be the biggest issue here...I only use around 250gb anyway.
How would a RAID on my current drives compare to a RAID on two SSDs?

jimmy29 · 18 Dec 2008 at 20:24

Your current disks would be significatly slower. Can always try them though and run some benchmarks, you'll then have something to compare against when looking for something new.