Best system drive OTHER THAN Raptor

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/27/round/page27.html#test_results

I hear the hitachi 1tb drive does really well too.

my seagate 320 sata perpendicular works very well. fast for a 7200 & quite

Hold out for a good SSD. Though they'll be more expensive (per GB), HDD's can't come close to SSD performance.

If you're looking for a good HDD, I suggest Seagate 7200.10. I have (2) 7200.8's in RAID 0 (with an external backup of course). Still, HDD's will always be the bottleneck of any system.

1st time poster, long time lurker here...

I'm using two WD1600JS SATA/300 drives in RAID-0 for Vista Enterprise with very good results.

Interesting side note:
Went to the Sandisk website to check out their 32-GB SSD and they brag about getting a Vista Experience Index score of 5.4 for that SSD.
Ummm... I get a score of 5.9 for my drives...
Which means that (surprise, surprise) the Vista Experience Index means next to nothing in the real world, as I'm relatively sure that the SSD would totally blow away my SATA RAID-0 setup in any and all ways.

When are those SSD's going to be available. at 32GB you could raid a couple of them and use it as a system drive. They are probably going to be pretty expensive though, at least for a while.

Hitachi drives are very good, I personally use Seagate and have never had a problem with them they run quiet and cool. I like the Barracuda ES drives, they are designed to run 24/7, 365 and are rock solid.

Initial SSD benchies of SSD for me weren't convincing enough. (Or are we simply reading different articles.) I wonder how long you'd have to wait for a desktop SSD.

In anycase I would recommend Seagate's or Hitachi's which I hear are also quite good.

SSD = Solid State Drive? What kind of prices are we talking about for one of those? What do you think the capacities will be? When will they be out?

Something to add to the mix: I live in a tropical country so heat is an issue (another reason why a 10k RPM drive is out for me)

The new 1TiB drive is just behind the raptor. After that, I believe the Seagate 7200.10 320GB is next. (I believe it trades blows with the 7200.10 750GB.) Unless your doing something that actually uses the harddrive, just get a good WD/7200.10 drive and don't worry about.

Insane prices. The current drives on laptops cost a few hundred bucks more than your normal hdisk.



Currently they're relatively small compared to desktop hard drives. I think 64GB was the relative high-end part.



Indefinite. Maybe if they become a whole load cheaper. As the only advantage of SSD's for desktops is speed. Current Hdisks produce a very small amount of heat compared to modern cpu's and vid cards and also consume around 5 times less power. For laptops, any reduction in power usage is welcome. For desktops, hell we got 1k power supplies!



How hot are we talking about? 50C room temperature? The raptor should survive in most pc cases as long as at least one of the intake case fans is directed to it.


4745454b is right (whatta name, lol). If you can't get a raptor, the 1TB of hitachi or seagate's will be fine. You'll be paying for an insane premium to just shave off seconds. I'd prefer the raptor for now.

Wish I could get even one  

at the moment, im partial to the western digital AA series drives, but ive also used and like the seagate 10s.

IMO, you cant go wrong with either.