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What's the best/fastest HDD...


TheReaper

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I'm going to buy a new hdd on Saturday, what is the best/fastest make/model around 160gb or smaller?

 

Raptor? who make them? Is there better/faster?

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I'm going to buy a new hdd on Saturday, what is the best/fastest make/model around 160gb or smaller?

 

Raptor? who make them? Is there better/faster?

 

Western Digital makes the Raptor. It's expensive.

 

Really Expensive

 

Much cheaper to just get two (or more) smaller, slower drives and run RAID 0. If that isn't an option or you aren't comfortable with it, you're pretty much stuck with the Raptor.

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I'll just chime in too.

 

What everybody else already said.

 

1 HDD = Raptor 10,000 RPM 74gb or 150gb = expensive

 

2 - 3 HDD = Just pick two or three with a brand you've had good success with and put them in RAID0 = pretty darn cheap right now

 

Extreme performance at an extreme price = 2 Raptors in RAID0

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Also 10K rpm means noise if that's a concern too.

 

Yep, mine definitely make the racket when they are working hard. That can be mitigated to some extent if you use rubber insulators between the drive and the drive cage, but even then you'll still know you've got Raptors.

 

Reaper,

I think that's the best way to go. I've often considered selling my Raptors and putting 3 WD 120 or 160gb drives in a RAID0.

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Yep, mine definitely make the racket when they are working hard. That can be mitigated to some extent if you use rubber insulators between the drive and the drive cage, but even then you'll still know you've got Raptors.

 

Reaper,

I think that's the best way to go. I've often considered selling my Raptors and putting 3 WD 120 or 160gb drives in a RAID0.

 

I agree 100% wev, mine make some noise and I've considered selling them also. Probably i should not have bought them and bought 1 or 2 more Hitachi 80Gig's to go with my other 2 and saved some money, oh well.

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Ok will do. There's one thing that confuses me about raid. If I save a file (avi) to say E: it will go there right? Because as I understand it, raid reads and writes to/between the two hdd's, am I correct?

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RAID0 splits the data blocks between your two drives. The size of the data blocks is dependent on the stripe size you set when you create the array.

 

Once the array is created the two drives are recognized and reported as a single drive letter. In most cases, if Windows is installed on the default partition of "C:" your array (when viewing in Windows) will be drive "C:" And it will consist of all the drives you used to create the array - for RAID0 that would be a minimum of two drives. Your reported drive size will be the combination of the capacity of both drives less reserved space on the disks (assuming you are using two drives of the same capacity).

 

You can use as many other drives as backup or storage as your motherboard will support.

 

So I think I understand your question. You'll have a backup or storage drive assigned as drive "E:" in addition to your array drive? If so, your files will be saved to whatever drive path you tell them. Whether that be your "E:" drive, your array drives, or any other drive or drive letter assignment you happen to have.

 

Here's probably one of the neatest sites I've seen for explaining how the various RAID types work, what the benefits and drawbacks of each are, etc.

 

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

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