onboard raid, or raid controller-advice/info

[frag85]

My mobo has onboard raid 0 and 1 for SATA drives. I'm concidering buying 2 WD rapter 10k rpm drives i have been eyeing for months now as a huge performance increase for I/O data. my rig is mostly for gaming and photo/video stuff. right now i have a 120 gig IDE drive that i plan on using for backups in the future(if i got SATA raid).

Would i be better off using Raid 0 to allow more I/O bandwidth on 2-10K drives for the most speed, and if i need backups to just run the backup on my EIDE drive, or should i buy a raid controller and just get a 2nd 120 gig EIDE drive running ATA raid? I dont' see the need for 240 gigs just b/c i'd never fill it, i've had enough trouble filling the 120 gig i have now. looking more for performance.

SATA 10kRPM setup: $240'ish w/ onboard(36.7gigx2 @~$120 ea.)
ATA 7.2KRPM setup: $90 for HDD. $20-$30 raid controller.

[jacuzz1]

Dude I run two Hitachi SATA 7k250 drives in a raid zero and they only cost me 80 dollars each. Performance is outstanding.


The raptors are more for an enterpise environment and frankly you wont notice that much more performance given your particular needs, however you will get more noise. If you go raptor do it right and get the 74 gigers. The 36 gig raptors are higher rpm than the Hitachi but have lower data densiity. Granted they are still faster but not fast enough to warrrant the cost and additional noise. Just my humble opinion.


Regarding ide raid, I used the Adaptec 1200 card with two WD Jb800 80 giggers in the past and it rocked Consider the card is around 85 dollars and a second drive is about the same. You have onbaord sata raid and to 7k250 drives cost the same as the card and the addtional ide drive you would buy therefore if you are being cost consious buy two Hitachi 7k250's or Seagate sata drives or wd SATA drives all in the 7200 rpm variety and save your hard earned money.