P5W DH in new build, 3 Raptors, RAID 0?

Kenyada

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I'm building a new one, which will be similar to the one in my signature. This time, however, I plan to use two 150GB WD Raptors in RAID 0 (ports SATA3 & SATA4) for data, and one dedicated Raptor (in red port SATA1) for the OS. My question is what size Raptor would you suggest for the OS? Would 74GB be too large? Is partitioning recommended?
 

shaba230

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Some people consider their program files directory, part of their OS. If you do, then hands down get the 74 gig because no its not too much in the long run.

However if you just mean your windows installation and then every program you install thereafter you plan to put on your two 150gigs, then you are fine with a 36gb raptor.

By the way what is the question mark for after raid 0? when i first saw your post i almost thought you were asking if you could put three drives on raid 0.
 

Kenyada

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Thanks, the "?" was a type-o [I'm so used to asking questions here, it came naturally] BTW, after checking the relatively small $50 price difference between the 74GB and 150GB, I decided to go whole hog (as they say in South... Brooklyn) and spring for the 150GB. Guess I'll have room for the Program Files as well as the OS, depending upon how that will impact performance.
 

Sunburn

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...after checking the relatively small $50 price difference between the 74GB and 150GB, I decided to... spring for the 150GB...
That's how they get us. Pretty basic ploy. Price the decent stuff $50 below the stuff they know we really want. Gigabyte DS3 for $150? Why not the ASUS P5B Deluxe for $50 more? X1900GT for $200? Why not the XT 256MB for $50 more? Occurs pretty regularly in this industry. It only sucks when you *need* to spend the extra $50. At which point you should be happy to spend it. And when it comes to doubling or tripling your HDD capacity, you should spend it.

I may still be scarred from my experience with my first computer and its miniature 120MB HDD. I'm in the middle of building a system too, and the $50 to go from 80GB to 250GB (Seagate Barracuda) is well worth while. It's one of the most worth-while $50 upgrades in the entire system design. Another $50 to go from E6300 to E6400? Price/Performance benefit is iffy, especially if imma overclock that ho till she can't crap right for a month. What with the massive size of OS and Program Files, let alone multiple games, 80GB isn't enough, so tripling your disk space for $50 is awesome. That's more performance difference than the $50 upgrade from the GT to XT, which is a damn big difference: $50 gets you from 35 FPS to 50 in PREY with all the bells and whistles turned on, as opposed to the $100 jump to XFX which gets you to 53. Three frames per second is not worth a hundred dollars. Not worrying about running out of hard drive space *is* worth the fifty.
 

Kenyada

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But sadly, whatever we manage to save on hard drives and video cards, will all be dished out for RAM. They used measure RAM in gigabytes, now it's oil barrels 8O
 

srxtreme

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If your using 3-150GB Raptors I consider setting up a RAID 5 so you can enjoy the speed increase of stipping and still have some of the security of mirroring.

RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more drives
RAID 5 is seen by many as the ideal combination of good performance, good fault tolerance and high capacity and storage efficiency


I'm planning to set one up on my system as soon as I locate another WD 200gb sata 150 drive.

Just a thought
 

Kenyada

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If your using 3-150GB Raptors I consider setting up a RAID 5 so you can enjoy the speed increase of stipping and still have some of the security of mirroring.

RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more drives
RAID 5 is seen by many as the ideal combination of good performance, good fault tolerance and high capacity and storage efficiency


I'm planning to set one up on my system as soon as I locate another WD 200gb sata 150 drive.

Just a thought

That's an idea. I hadn't even consider anything other than RAID 0. I'm not too much concerned with fault tolerance, since I'm planning to use a Seagate 500GB eSATA (external drive) for backups. I like to keep my backups in a different location than my computer, and the external drive gives me that peace of mind.

I'll look into RAID 5. Thanks.