Hard Drive Suggestions - Help

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Rythn

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Jan 1, 2009
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Is it better to have a single WD Velociraptor 150GB or two 7200RPM in RAID 0?

If 7200RPM, any specific drives?

I also have a Seagate 500GB 7200.10 that I could use for backup.

Rest of the Components (shipping at the moment):
Intel i7 920 / Thermalright 120 Extreme
Foxconn BloodRage x58 Mobo
6GB OCZ DDR3 1600
EVGA GTX 260 Core 216
Xigmatek 750W
Lian Li PC-V1010B
 
Rythn said:
Is it better to have a single WD Velociraptor 150GB or two 7200RPM in RAID 0?

If 7200RPM, any specific drives?

I also have a Seagate 500GB 7200.10 that I could use for backup.

Rest of the Components (shipping at the moment):
Intel i7 920 / Thermalright 120 Extreme
Foxconn BloodRage x58 Mobo
6GB OCZ DDR3 1600
EVGA GTX 260 Core 216
Xigmatek 750W
Lian Li PC-V1010B
Click to expand...

This little baby will give you performance extremely close to a Raptor (around 10% less, hardly even noticeable) with a lot more storage for a fraction of the cost. Unless you absolutely have to have RAID, you could probably even get away with a single drive.
 
kevinzak said:
This little baby will give you performance extremely close to a Raptor (around 10% less, hardly even noticeable) with a lot more storage for a fraction of the cost. Unless you absolutely have to have RAID, you could probably even get away with a single drive.
Click to expand...

QFT. I have 2 of those HDDs (though not in any kind of RAID) and they are awesome. I was about to recommend them for all the same reasons as above. These babies put foot to ass (or maybe needle to spindle).

Edit: Nice setup OP, looks similar to mine.
 
I was just about to ask the same question. Is the Seagate ST3640323AS a better option than the WD WD6400AAKS? I read that the Seagate has NCQ, would the sata controller on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 support this? Thanks.
 
guitarguy6 said:
I was just about to ask the same question. Is the Seagate ST3640323AS a better option than the WD WD6400AAKS? I read that the Seagate has NCQ, would the sata controller on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 support this? Thanks.
Click to expand...

The Seagate usually benchmarks with slightly higher transfer rates but the WD has lower seek times. This thread kind of sums that up.

I can't seem to find any links to back this up, so note this is entirely just from what I think I can remember and you should wait for someone else to either call me stupid or back this up before acting on it. I believe the UD5 can support NCQ if you enable AHCI mode in the BIOS and use the appropriate driver. However, I don't believe you will get much of a performance boost out of it.

Personally I would go with WD but dish out the extra $5 for the WD6401AALS with the bigger cache and the 5-year warranty (versus 3-year for the AAKS). That's just me, though.
 
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