SATA 150/300-Will SATA 150 HDs work on MOBOs SATA 300

[shanethegeek]

Here is my problem I want to build a new gaming rig.

Here is a link to the board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131011
Go to the specifications tab on your right hand side of the page.

There are two different drives I am considering both WD.
SATA 300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701
SATA 150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136033

At first I would like to buy one. Because of budget reasons. However later I would like to possibly buy one more matching drive and use RAID0.

Q1
Can I use the SATA 150 Raptor(s) with a board that specifys only SATA 300.

Q2
What are your veiws on cost/performace/data security with RAID0 and these two particular drives.

Any help with this would be much appreciated.

P.S. Keep in mine that I am on a budget so some crazy HD setup wont be possible.

I am actually really trying to figure out which/what HD will be the best in terms of gaming.

 

[rockyjohn]

SATA 3.0GB is backwards compatible with SATA 1.5GB - so yes you can use either SATA drive.

I am not a fan of RAID 0 so someone else will have to answer that question. For me the little extra speed is not worth the cost.

 

[shanethegeek]

Thank you very much.

Yeah my freind really does not see the big deal about raid either.

 

[cattbert]

I have no experience with the Raptor, but Anandtech just did a short article on it:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2922&p=1

While impressive, I was surprised with how close the Seagate 320 gig perpendicular drive was in many of the tests ... slower (except for the DVD transcoding test), but not by what I would consider a huge margin.

As to the Raid 0, there is no redundancy in such a setup, so I would only use it if you have another hard drive to backup to and are willing to set up some sort of regular backup. I use Norton Ghost and back up regularly to one of my secondary drives. My understanding of Raid 0 is that the benefits are most notable when reading / moving very large files, which is why I use it (for video editing with very large DV files).

 

[shanethegeek]

Thank You very much for your reply. I was a very informative article. So I am still kinda of weighing the speeds of the drive I heard the Seagate Barracudas are really exceptional.

I am open to any suggestions on a well performing HD.

 

[sailer]

Great review. It confirms my desire for a Raptor 150 gig. Yes its expensive for its size, but I get impatient at times when waiting for a program to load.