bobdragster

Part of my build, posted here - New [Q9550/4870/X48] Build
I know some of this may have been answered previously in other threads, but I would like one place to gather all info for my build. Thanks.

500GB+ Storage Space.
- What is the quickest 500GB+?
- What are the best RAID options for speed and data backup?
- Should I look into multiple drives to achive higher speeds as well as getting data backup?
- A little help on what RAID setups actually do... I have only ever dealt with single drive configurations.

+REP will be given for any help!

br3nd064

The fastest >500gb hard drive is probably this. Raid 0 is the fastest, but is also the least reliable. Raid 5 is probably the best for speed/reliability, but most motherboards don't support it very well. My recommendation would be to get a 300gb velociraptor for the OS, then a single 640gb for storage/backup.

There are 3 types of raid that are most commonly used, so I'll explain those.
Raid 0: 2 disks required, stripes the data across the disks, high speed, low reliability, if 1 disk fails, the whole array is gone.
Raid 1: 2 disks required, mirrors the data to both disks, low speed, high reliability, can survive 1 disk failure.
Raid 5: 3 disks required, stripes with parity, high speed, high reliability, can survive 1 disk failure.

Here's a page explaining the differences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

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Emraith

the wd 640gig hard drive that br3nd064 mentioned is awesome. I originally bought 2 of them to put in a raid 0, but decided the risk of losing 1.2TB of data would be a bad thing, and am running basically 1 partitioned to os/programs and the other as page file, backup, etc. Definately not the most idea setup, but it works for me. Here is a link with some comparisons between the velociraptor, original raptor, and wd 640. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3311&p=6.

velociraptor beats the 640 on just about everything, but up until that drive came out, everyone loved the raptor..and the 640 pretty much kills it in all of those benchmarks. I'd think it really depends on how much you would value the performance difference. A 640 is $75, a raptor is $180/$280 depending on the drive, and you're getting 150/300 gigs compared to 640. I'd be curious to see how the 3x640gig drives would compare in raid5 vs a velociraptor..would still be cheaper than the velociraptor 300gig, and you'd gain the reliability of a raid1... plus you'd have 1.2TB of space