Which would be better

[Alexrose1uk]

I intend to mostly game, listen to music, msn, surf the net, occasional web and audio work, or a combination of the above.

Would I be better off getting one larger 250GB Hitachi Deskstar, waiting a little longer and getting two say 160GB Hitachis and RAID0'ing them. Is the speed benefit worth it, or is it more hassle than its worth?

 

[semi-pro waster]

I'd get the one larger drive if you need the space, you probably won't notice that much difference from Raid0 given the uses you are suggesting and the fact that you would lose all your data should one drive fails means that it isn't normally worth the hassle. You should still have a back-up routine whatever you do though

 

[Zefan]

Fact is the 250 is the best performance HDD on the market (Before the raptor of course) due to it's data density. It'll be faster having the single 250.

 

[jbloggs]

Alexrose1uk:

I recently purchased a Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM, it gives a 56MB/s + Average read in HD Tach, it is on a ICH5R con, the Burst speed suffers some because my mobo does not support SATAII, but it still manages to give 130MB/s + of a Burst speed, but Burst speed is NOT important, so all in all I am very pleased with it.

I also have 2 x 74GB Raptors running as independant HDDs, they give an Average read of 65MB/s + on the same con., ICH5R, so the Deskstar is still quite a bit behind the 74GB Raptor. Also had 2 x 74GB Raptors in RAID0, again on ICH5R con, for 12 months, and they were very quick indeed, an Average read of 130MB/s +, I found it was excellent for working with large video files, and really that is about the only reason you would want to run a RAID0 set up. Do remember with RAID0 you have no redundancy, ie if 1 HDD goes you loose everything on that RAID0 set up, so if you do set up RAID0, make sure you back up everything you don't want too loose onto another separate HDD.

I would suggest if you want a RAID0 setup (for the reason stated above), go for a 2 x 74GB Raptor set up rather than 2 x 160GB Hitachi's. If you don't work with large video files I would simply buy the 250GB Deskstar, you will be very pleased with it, as I am!

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Thanks...250GB Hitachi it is then