upgrading two 7200.10 320GB. Recommendations?

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leo_bsb

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As the title says, I'm running my system OS on two 7200.10 320GB on RAID 0. I have a 750GB WD where I keep all my media. I don't keep my emails and pictures on a second drive, I need to start to do some sort of back up, since I don't have any for my raid setup.

I'm not following the recent hard drives debates, I started to read some threads about the WD 640GB and some people using 2 drives with 2 partitions, running RAID 0 on one partition and RAID 1 on another partition and backing up the Raid 0 partition on the Raid 1 partition. Very clever. But how you guarantee that the RAID 0 partition is on the border for better performance?

I have some questons, please notice that I have a maximus formula and no other hardware raid controller.

What is considered a performance upgrade for me?

- buy one velociraptor for OS and keep my current 2 seagates for files/media?

- buy 2 new 32MB cache seagates drives and do the RAID in separated partitions, keeping performance for the OS on RAID 0 and back up on redundancy RAID 1?

- buy two WD6400AAKS? Are they really better than seagates 7200.11 with 32MB cache? I really like seagates since they have a RMA center in Brazil and WD drives should be sent to USA for replacements.

any other suggestions? I don't want to break the bank but I could spent the $300 on the velociraptor 300GB.
 
Personally, I am a KISS kind of person. (Keep It Simple Stupid)

I, personally do not trust those fancy multi raid controllers. I store my important data on a Network Attached Storage device, and back it up to external USB drives.

Even RAID 1 is not a replacement for a real backup backup solution. If a power hit zaps both drives in a RAID 1 setup, your data is gone.

I personally would go with the Velociraptor, keep the data on a separate drive, with an external backup of that data. (Preferably 2 copies of the backup data.)

Don
 
thanks guys.
I'll manage to back up my files in an external usb disk.
Regarding the OS and data disk:
- keep my two 7200.10 320GB in raid0 for OS and buy a new bigger disk for data? $85 upgrade
- two velociraptor 150 in raid 0 and keep data on my old 320GB disks? $360 upgrade
- one velociraptor 300GB for OS and keep my old 320GB for data (I could sell those here and buy a new bigger disk while I'm in USA). $290 upgrade
- Two 7200.11 640GB in RAID 0 (short stroke) and RAID 1 (data) $190 upgrade

I don't know if the last option is doable.
 
Yes, it is.

I have three Seagate 7200.10 250GB discs with a RAID 0 at the fastest part and a RAID 5 on the slower part.

They are gonne be replaced by three / four WD 6400AAKS discs. And this time RAID 0 only. I hate the slow writes of the onboard RAID 5 and I have a external backup anyway.
 
leo_bsb said:
thanks guys.
I'll manage to back up my files in an external usb disk.
Regarding the OS and data disk:
- keep my two 7200.10 320GB in raid0 for OS and buy a new bigger disk for data? $85 upgrade
- two velociraptor 150 in raid 0 and keep data on my old 320GB disks? $360 upgrade
- one velociraptor 300GB for OS and keep my old 320GB for data (I could sell those here and buy a new bigger disk while I'm in USA). $290 upgrade
- Two 7200.11 640GB in RAID 0 (short stroke) and RAID 1 (data) $190 upgrade

I don't know if the last option is doable.
Click to expand...

I am actually waiting for the Velociraptor 150's to become widely available, and am going to buy 1 or 2 of them to move my OS over to. It is currently on a 500 gig 7200.11 drive.

If you already have a 750 gig drive, keeping 2 320s also does not make a lot of sense. It adds alot of heat and noise for not so much gain.

So, I vote for option 2, but ditch the smaller drives.

Don
 
Syntax Error said:
You would trust eBay over Newegg on their packaging? At least Newegg can be held accountable.
Click to expand...
I've never gotten what I would consider proper packaging from newegg on a hard drive purchase. I purchased my VelociRaptor from eBay and it was packaged great. Of course there is going to be variability among different sellers, but it's not a big deal IMO since you have the manufacturer's warranty either way.
And good luck holding newegg "accountable". Sure, you can RMA it if it's DOA, but all they're going to do is ship you another poorly packaged drive.
 
thanks guys, I still didn't decide.
Currently my 750GB drive is in my HTPC, so I'll probably need another one for files and media. I should had bought a NAS in first place.
 
EnderW said:
I've never gotten what I would consider proper packaging from newegg on a hard drive purchase. I purchased my VelociRaptor from eBay and it was packaged great. Of course there is going to be variability among different sellers, but it's not a big deal IMO since you have the manufacturer's warranty either way.
And good luck holding newegg "accountable". Sure, you can RMA it if it's DOA, but all they're going to do is ship you another poorly packaged drive.
Click to expand...

Besides; most sellers on eBay care about the feedback they get. And a lot of buyers are keen enough to give negative feedback for poorly packed stuff.
 
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