Hard Drive Dilemma

[ArcticWolves]

I am having a hard time deciding what would be better and/or last me longer in building my new system?

Currently I was just going to get a single Seagate Barracuda 320GB Hard Drive as that is more than enough space for me. However, I had orignally planned on getting one Western Digital Raptor X 150GB Hard Drive.

So here is my dilemma I created for myself. I narrowed it down to the following:

Option 1: 2x Western Digital Raptor X 150GB = 300GB
Option 2: 1x Western Digital Raptor X 150GB + 1x Seagate Barracuda 320GB = 470GB
Option 3: 2x Seagate Barracuda 320GB = 640GB

Now I don't know what I would even think of doing with a 640GB Hard Drive as I currently have a 120GB hard drive & am only using 85GB. Please help me decide what would be a better solution. I am liking Option 2 the best I think. Thank you!

[tomato]

Option 3: Seagate's are great ;) and you WILL use up the space, if for no other reason than to use up some space on your HD :P

Oh, and welcome to Bjorn3D :)

[Victor]

it depends if you want performance or storage and how much you want to spend. If you do not care too much about performance, then forget about raid as they can be troublesome to setup and if one fail, you could loose all of your data. If you want performance and not raid, go for option 2 (it will give you performance of raptor and have storage for seagate). Otherwise, just get 1 seagate hd.

[DragonMaster]

Go with Option 3

You're not using it for now, just do things you couldn't do with a small drive(copy of all your CDs in lossless compression, recording HDTV) and fill it up.

[ArcticWolves]

I have decided on 2 Digital Raptors in RAID 0 array.

[markkleb]

Good plan, I like Raid0 arrays. Hard to beat the 2 Raptors as long as the $$$ is there.

[Scott]

RAID 0's are not on my good list since I had a drive fail in one. For the price he is looking at spending he could go with 4 of the 320GB's like I did and do a RAID 5.

[Kougar]

Hmm, Option 4) For the price of those two WD Raptors I'd build 4 x 400gb RAID 5 array. Or maybe a 0+1... :mrgreen:

[markkleb]

on my post I had put my 4 Hitachi Sata2s in Raid0 beat the Raptors (and only cost $180) but he said he already made his desision and I erased that part of the post.

As a matter of fact the WD160s that im using now (even with 16mb buffers) are slower than the Hitachis (8mb buffers)

[ArcticWolves]

I appreciate the input Scott but I don't need that much space. I get by with my 120GB hard drive. I have no need to ever want to go beyond 300GB. I am very selective of what takes up my space.

If I am not going to use something anymore I will completely uninstall it. I won't be downloading all this stuff that takes up so much space. I feel 300GB will be more than sufficient and I'll also have the performance of the Hard Drives.

On another note, these hard drives alone should last me a long time and I feel it's a good investment into buying them.

[ArcticWolves]

I had something to add. I will probably get an external hard drive to do all the backing up of my data anyways. These hard drives are for PERFORMANCE and SPEED!! I want my games to load fast 8-).

Another alternative is to get two 250GB Western Digital Caviars (LINK: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701. You all are suggesting Seagate though are they better more stable than Western Digitals?

[Victor]

if you want game to load fast, then I guess go for the raptor or maybe even raid. If you want external HD (check out our review on some of the external enclosure, and put your hd in them (get the esata enclosure as they performs better).

As for WD vs Seagate, they are equally good, it's just that seagate has 5 years and gives us more assurance with the reliability:).

[Scott]

Also want to point out the Raptor 150GB is not much faster than the Seagate 320GB. You could get 2 of the Seagates and have an awesome RAID 0 for around 200.00

Or get 2 of them and run a RAID 1 then you data security and speed.

[ArcticWolves]

I have decided on the two Western Digital Caviars 250GB in RAID 0. Cost me less than 200$. I feel that's the best option and isn't throwing money away.

[Null]

I have decided on the two Western Digital Caviars 250GB in RAID 0. Cost me less than 200$. I feel that's the best option and isn't throwing money away.

Not a bad choice there.

Sometimes getting the best isn't the best buy.

And getting more bang for your buck leaves you with more bucks to go bang on something else.

Bonk! Bonk!

[Kougar]

I have decided on the two Western Digital Caviars 250GB in RAID 0. Cost me less than 200$. I feel that's the best option and isn't throwing money away.

Make sure you back up your data frequently then. Many people here including myself have had bad experiences with WD, although not quite everyone... ;)

[GIBSON]

One thing to remember though is that isn't always a good idea to do all your backups on an external drive, they tend to fail earlier than the internal ones :lol:

[ArcticWolves]

Well I ordered 2 320GB Seagate Barracudas w/ perpindicular recording technology. I decided I'll take a chance with them as I see there is such good reports about them over the Western Digitals. Hopefully they last me until my next build in 4/5 years. Should have this computer built hopefully by Christmas.

[markkleb]

I hear those are really good HDDs, Great Xmas present to urself:grin:

[tomato]

Good choice, thumbs up ArticWolves ;) :) You won't be dissappointed 8)

[p0lish]

Had the raid0 failed twice. All it takes for all your data to disappear is an error of one of your drives. In my case it was a power failure that lasted 2-3 seconds that made me say buh buh to all my data. But then again, i have an older raid controller built into my mobo.

[ArcticWolves]

Ok I am going to takes Scott's advice on this one and put them in Raid 1. Boy, this will be my first time having two hard drives so this should be a learning experience how to set them up in RAID format. Wish me luck!

[ArcticWolves]

Alright, I have them mounted in my rig and was wondering if there are any jumper settings for them? (Master/Slave)

[Scott]

Not if you bought SATA drives, no more master slave thing.