Raid config, 4 sata 1 40gb hard drives or 2 sata 2 80 gb hds

[raknarius]

Hi all im gona be building a new system not sure yet on the am2 or conroe. I have access to free box of 5 40gb barracuda 40gb hard drives that are sata 1 (1.5 gb)

Model for the 40gb drive ST340014AS, says 2mb buffer?

Now i do have in my budget enough for two 80gb new barracuda drives taht are sata 2 (3gb).

My question is this on a new nforce mb with sata raid (which i assume all mb sata raid is fakeraid)

Which would be faster, im looking for those fast bf2 load times i dont worry at all about data storage onlything on this comp is xp and games.

Now im wondering if the hard drives really need the 3.0gb of transfer or if the 1.5s would be just as good and free.

Or i also hear that motherboard sata raid puting more then 2 drives on it can really take a processor hit, but yes i will be using duel core processor either amd5000 or conroe 6600/6700

Thanks for all those who reply.

 

[choirbass]

well... if youre not going to be able to purchase more hdds later, i would say to just get the 4*40GB hdds for raid 0... ...if you are however possibly going to be able to invest in an eventual purchase... i would go with the 2*80GB hdds in raid 0, and add 1 or more later... ...the throughput performance of an 80 GB drive by itself is higher than a 40GB drive, simply because the drive is larger

youll be perfectly fine with even sata 150, let alone sata 300... all that means is that each individual drive has a 'throughput limit' of 300MB/s... and a single 150GB 10000RPM raptor cant even transfer that fast (most single 7200RPM hdds are still under ata/100 bandwidth even)... ...so youll be more than okay using numerous hdds... ...the individual drives arent sharing sata bandwidth...

in regards to onboard raid... its just as valid as an add on raid controller, the difference being that its onboard and not seperate

cpu performance shouldnt be hindered really either way though, since its not using software based raid at all