RAID 0 with performance on a budget

[leesiulung]

I want to RAID 0 two drives for better performance (not too worry about the data) on a budget of less than $140.

I'm looking for 2 hard drives with the following requirement:

- SATA interface
- 80GB or more (I'm willing to trade space for speed)
- Price range $50-70 (I don't mind rebates)
- Preffered 16mb Cache

What is the recommended drives?

What is the fastest SATA drive (non WD Raptor)?

People seem to prefer the Seagate 7200.10 320GB, but they cost around $95...

Anyone care to help?

 

[turboflame]

Well heres an option:

Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600YS 160GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache

2 of these would cost $126, they have 16MB cache, They are RAID Edition (RE) so they are specifically designed to run in a RAID setup.

If you want to spend a little more (~$160), you could get 2 250GB drives from seagate or WD

Hope this helps, just remember to back up your data, if one drive dies it's impossible to recover any data

 

[leesiulung]

Looks like a nice drive, however the review mentions it is loud...

I wonder if the RAID card has to support this feature: "RAID-specific time limited error recovery " for optimal performance. Nice thing it looks like it has 5 year warranty.

I can't seem to find any reviews and benchmarks. I would love to see this one against 7200.10 drives from Seagate.

The price is definetly right though...

 

[chiefgabbai]

It's a bit over $140, but what about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144

They are $80 each. Does it really matter to you if they are 16MB cache? There are 7200.10 200GB drives from Seagate for $71 each with 8MB cache; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148146.

You can find others.

BTW, have you read Anandtech for a raid 0 performance overview?