Hard drive question...

[t2uciet]

Hey everyone,

I am in need to replace my raid 0 setup of 2 Seagate 500gb 7200.10

It's starting to make some noise so I figure I need to replace them asap. It's been running awfully slow considering its in raid 0

I did a few searches and I think I will probably switch to the Western Digital Black's. Now, the confusing part. I was settled for the 640gb's but the 1TB's are nice too. My current setup will be my daily computer for everyday tasks, gaming, and just web browsing. I do transfer a lot to my other hard drives (media HD, 1 anime and 1 pictures/misc) so I would like a pretty fast/stable transfer rate if possible. I would like quick load on windows and gaming (starcraft 2 for example).

My questions are:

1. Will going from my current raid 0 setup to a single 640gb or 1tb be slower? If so, how bad?

2. If I go single, 640gb or 1tb?

3. If I go raid, I will mostly go with 640gb's due to size. I can't imagine myself risking 2tb of data. Any other suggestion on the best HD raid setup using 2 Western Digital Black's?

 

[Dangman]

1) Please post a screenshot of HDTune or any hard drive benchmark app so that we can have a reference point of the performance you're seeing now.
2) 1TB Black for the fast storage. WD 500GB Blue for fast OS drive. I do not recommend the WD 640GB Black since the WD 500GB Blue outperforms it as welll as the 1TB Black and is $29 cheaper than the WD 640GB Black. Here's a screenshot of the WD5000AAKS:


VS the WD6400AAKS (Black's performance is the same):
http://www.alphaq.org/enginurd/hdd/HDTune_Benchmark_WDC WD6400AAKS-00A7B.png

So yeah, the WD 500GB Blue is the better buy. The WD 500GB Black has not been confirmed to be a single platter design like the WD 500GB Blue so I cannot recommend it now.

3) RAID 0 for the most performance but higher chance of data loss. RAID 1 if you want some uptime guarantee.

 

[t2uciet]

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Test 4 Short Sroke at 500gb for the heck of it...