Still having a hard time deciding on the best hard drive configuration for my new Vista box. Since the 680i looks like my chipset of choice, Intel Matrix Raid went out the window. So now I am trying to decide between:

150 Raptor for Games and 2x750 RAID 1 Cuda's for OS & Business ($950)

or

3x500 RAID 5 Cuda's for everything. ($700)

Price and capacity are small factors for the purpose of this discussion.

i would go with the 150 raptor plus 2x750's

thats what I am planning for my next build

Since price and capacity are not factors, I'd put 2 Raptor 150's in Raid 0 and then have a 750 for storage or two 750's not raided for storage if you need that much space.

Price is always somewhat of a factor or yes I would RAID 0 two Raptors and RAID 1 two 7200.10's. What I meant was it would not be a deciding factor between the two choices I mentioned. Security of data is #1 priority since I run my home business off the same machine. That is why my data has to sit on a redundant drive. But performance is important (albeit less so) for the gaming that I also do on this machine. Therefore, I want to get the most bang for the buck <$1000. Included in this is noise and power (i.e. I don't want 6 x $80 drives in a RAID 5).

I stand corrected about the price factor. In that case, I would go with your first option, a single 150 gig Raptor and the two 750 gig drives in RAID 1. I would put the OS on the Raptor, as its easier and safer to repair the OS when its on a separate disc then sharing with important data.

Another thing you might consider is nightly back-ups to tape if you really have that much business data to save. Well, just consider how long it would take to rebuild 750GB of data at 7200rpm if one of the drives failed.. just food for thought. Store the tapes in a fire/moisture-proof safe.

I would think that the OS is the most important data that I would want to have on the RAID 1 drive. If I put it on the Raptor, I have a single point of failure and if that drive fails, I have to reinstall all of my apps. Having it on the RAID drive would allow me to just switch over to the working drive. Am I missing something?

It really depends on what you do. I'm a database programmer / javascript programmer / graphic designer, and I never back up my OS or software because reinstalling them is only a two- to three-hour loss.

Because I do a lot of work on the web (where adware, malware, and kruft build up quickly) I keep a clean image of my OS and software, and I completely rebuild the OS and software from a clean image at least twice a year.

But I have 200Gbs of video, images, and code that I could not replace. A lot of them are custom images, vector graphics and tutorials that my clients will want updated. Once you have that much data that you want to protect, doing backups becomes very time intensive.

I can't afford the time to back up all of the software (especially $*#$@*$% MS Visual Studio .NET), so my OS and apps go on a single 74G Raptor. But my work goes on a 3-drive RAID with a one-touch backup and a weekly offsite DVD.

I could care less about losing my software or my games. I'm worried about losing my work.

Sorry to reply before you even replied to my last post regarding the OS installation, but if we presume for the moment that the OS will be installed on a redundant drive. Do you think for general computer usage (heavy multitasking - burning DVDs, ITunes, using program that hits SQL database {located on server}, Office, Skype, etc.) I would see better performance on a RAID 1 array or RAID 5 array? Would it be an appreciable difference or just slight gain. Thanks.

4 X WD 320's, at around $100 each, but I've just had crap luck with Seagate drives lately.

I agree with Seanreisk. I never trust important data to the C: drive, where the OS, games etc are. All important data goes to D: and E: drives, with regular backups. Its a pain to loose games if something happens to the OS and a re-install is required, but its a far worse pain to loose data.

I do back up the C: drive using Norton Ghost from time to time on a completely separate hard disc and then take that disc out of the computer for safekeeping. That way, if the hard disc fails, I can simply put in the second hard disc with the OS and not loose too much time.

Installing the OS on a RAID 5 is a bad idea. Write operations on a RAID 5 have a large CPU overhead which will equal bad performance (the OS will have a ton of small write operations = a ton of overhead). Read performance is much better, that is why you often see RAID 5 used in file servers.

I think your best bet an OS/program drive and a RAID 1 for storage (RAID 5 is best suited for 4-6 drives. Any less and you might as well do RAID 1. Any more and you're creating too many failure points).

I agree with the above posters. I don't like having my OS and my Data on the same HD/array. After a 6month-1 years usage, my Os gets 'dirty' and start under performing, so I re-install it. If data is on the same drive, it gets a bit tricky...you need to back up and so on.

My preferred setup is the following:
2X raptor 37 gig Raid0 ( I found that 75 gig for OS/game/apps is plenty for me) the 37 gig have one of the worst gig/$ though but I dont need the extra capacity...that's a personnal preference.

Then when you install all the OS / Service Pack/ drivers/ application you knw you will always need ( office/codecs/so on) you make an image with Acronis TrueImage(nice because you can do images while running windows, no reboot necessary!) or NortonGhost(vista will have it's own imaging software) and you throw it on your RAID data HD.

And the for the data, 2X750 gig in raid1 is really good, I personally trust my HD for 2-3 years. So I don't bother with raid, I just backup important stuff on my external HD with a backup software.
Best practices is to redirect My documents on the Raid1 and put the page fil there also.

Just a few ideas I thought I would throw out there!

I'd go with 2 150 raptors in raid 0 and only one 750. .. Faster and cheaper.