Hard drive configuration for gaming PC

[Thrus]

I'm building a new gaming rig and am trying to figure out what I want to do as far as the hard drives go. Creating a storage server so don't neeed much of a storage space.

Three ideas that I have are:
1) two 500GB WD Black in a RAID 0
2) one drive as OS, second as install/storage
3) cheap small drive as OS , Second for Install, and third for data (mostly ISO's for the games, I hate trying to locate the CD)

 

[DougLite]

On mechanical drives, smaller = slower. Simply doubling the size of a drive (even at the same density platters) increases performance about seven percent. Additionally, larger drives have larger caches, another performance advantage. The smallest mechanical drive I'd consider is 500GB, ideally with 32MB of cache. If you want to go the small system drive route, an SSD is the only way to fly.

If you're looking for a drive to store ISOs, videos, and the like, one of the 5400RPM high density drives will do the job at a lower cost with less heat and noise.
What's your budget?

 

[crazjayz]

I'd go with either a 60GB Vertex or X25-M (2 for RAID if you can spring the cash) and a 1/1.5TB for your ISO's and whatnot. DougLite is right, if you're looking for the best perf/$ it's SSD right now.

 

[Thrus]

should have mentioned about budget. SSD is definately outside of the budget, but wish it wasn't. Was hoping to be in the $150-170 range. maybe could swing going up to 300GB velociraptor but that would pretty much eat the budget for drive space, and I'm not comfortable with that for storage for OS/games/ISOs. Was hoping to get similar performance either by raid (motherboard will support it) or splitting where the data was stored.

Reason for the limited budget is that I'm actualy building two of the sytem one for me and one for the wife.