Hard Drive Help

[inchy97]

hey i have been wanting to get 2 new hard drives for my computer. i was going to possibly set them into raid 0 and all the jazz and i am running XP 64 bit pro i want to keep my budget around 150$ for both of them

i have a few that i have been lookign at tell me your thoughts

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136544
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

again i want to be able to raid them.

[soybean]

I imagine either of them would serve you quite well.  I don't know how significant the difference in cache (64MB vs. 32MB) would be. 

[inchy97]

well right now i am running  a 300gb WD like 5000 RPM and i have a couple programs at start up that make my comp slow...so i would just pop the 300 for storage of things. and have these to for perforance and storage..so i think it would kinda serve me well. and also my hard drive always gets filled up for time to time with music i have and games i get and stuff like that. so i am looking to expand but not crazy 1 TB

[patio]

Why RAID ? ?

[inchy97]

because it spilts the bottle necking of the comp when i am starting windows

[Allan]

because it spilts the bottle necking of the comp when i am starting windows

Are you saying you want to use raid so Windows will load faster?

[patio]

Wow...i never heard that one before...

[inchy97]

well yes, i have only 1 drive currently. and my hard drive is the slowest part of my computer currently and it takes around 2-5mins for my comp to start and it is quite annoying. also it will start applications faster and that is big when i dont have wait for photoshop and premier and stuff so i am just saying it will cost me around 150 also i need the extra space because i am always getting my 300gb HD filled up so if i am going to get more space why not go raid 0 also i am going to be upgrading to windows 7 because it looks nice and i dont have to worry about the floppy drive raid drivers install.

so yeah thats why i want to do this so if you have any suggestions on HD's that would be great other then trying to get me out of RAID i have done my research and check benchmarks so on ans so forth so....

[soybean]

well right now i am running  a 300gb WD like 5000 RPM ...

Your drive is either 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm.  Are you absolutely sure it's not 7200 rpm?  What make and model is it? 

If your 300GB is, indeed, a 5400 rpm HD, you'd probably notice a significant performance boost just by getting one of those HD's you posted.  I think I'd try just getting one new drive and see how it goes before going to a RAID configuration.

And, keep in mind that with a fresh install of Win 7, which you said you're planning to do, you may be pleasantly surprised with it's startup time without a RAID configuration.

[giardmi09]

@ patio.  Definition of RAID 0: (striped disks) distributes data across multiple disks in a way that gives improved speed at any given instant.

@ inchy97
So yes theoretically you can improve your boot time using RAID 0. But it mostly depends on factors such as what stripe size you use.

[inchy97]

@ soybean sorry yes i was meaning a 5400 RPM and i really dont want to take it out to see the model number buts its just a western digital 300 gb hard drive and it CANNOT go RAID 0

@ giardmi09 what do you mean stripe size?

[BC_Programmer]

(striped disks) distributes data across multiple disks in a way that gives improved speed at any given instant.

No. It doesn't. you can't just combine two 5200RPM drives into a Striped RAID array and get the performance of a 7200RPM drive. in fact, they will almost always be slower then a single 7200RPM drive.


Also as far as boot time is concerned it will probably slow it down since almost every read from disk is done synchronously, so it will read a chunk from one drive, wait, read a chunk from the other drive, wait, etc instead of just doing a single burst read on one drive. On the other hand, it depends how the RAID array is handled. I imagine it's also likely that a single burst read request to the striped array will be coordinated by the RAID controller.

But I mean, seriously. get real. the "boot time gain" from using a striped RAID array is maybe a single second. Tops. a entire second (MAYBE) shaved off boot time at the cost of half your total disk space and twice as much probability for data loss (if either drive fails in a RAID 0 array, ALL the data is lost from both). Yeah, not worth it IMO.

[patio]

I have a pretty good understanding of RAID and how it works giardmi09  so thank you...
However i see little or no use for it for the casual PC user and don't buy into the talk of some spectacular speed gains...hence the question.

[inchy97]

well i have built my comp for performance and i want to be. and boot time is in the back of my mind i could care less. i want more storage and speed and if it gives me a little more speed why not

[patio]

Then go for it...personally i wouldn't.
But thats strictly an opinion.