Best Drives for a Raid 10 Array?

[Joseph42]

I plan to have a 4 drive Raid 10 array in my next new computer. I was considering partitioning the array into about 6 separate partitions including a partition just for the operating system, one for games, one for documents, one for data, etc. Is this a good idea? I will use Acronis backup software to backup the partitions to a 5th drive at least once a week.

What SATA drives would be best for the Raid 10?

Or, would I be better off to have my operating system on a Raid 0 array? I play a lot of games.

 

[thebeephaha]

Okay first off, "6 separate partitions" BAD IDEA. Just makes things too complicated. Two or three tops.

Secondly, 4 drives for RAID10 will be fairly slow, especially depending on the raid controller you have and if everything was running off it.

I suggest do a RAID0+1 configuration and run maybe some Seagate 7200.10 series drives. They are pretty good anywhere from the 320GB or higher, just make sure (if you can) you don't get one with the dreaded AAK firmware revision, the reads are much slower.