Put OS on 74gb Raptor Raid0 or Seagate 500gb 7200.12?

[ken2000ac]

Disclaimer: I will have image backups of OS on a separate drive, thus reliability is not an issue. I am aware of the risks of using Raid0 and data-loss. I have 6 drives totaling 4tb, thus space is not an issue, either.

I am seeking raw speed, but do not wish to move to SSD's just yet. So which would be faster? By what margin? It would be convenient to be able to use the Seagate for photo-storage, especially considering the size of the Raptors make them far less useful. With this being said, what OS drive to use for my new i7 build?

Seagate 500gb single platter 7200.12
or
WD 74gb Raptors in RAID0

Drive will contain OS, some programs, and a few games. Raid controller will be an on-board Intel controller on the Evga x58 main-board.

 

[MikeD096]

I went with 2x 500GB 7200.12 drives (RAID 0) in my recent rebuild. The 7200.12 drives are amazing! Cool, quiet, spectacular performance for a low cost.

I ran HD Tach in Vista 64 against my RAID 0...
Average Read: 211 MB/s
Burst: 263 MB/s

Average read in the first 500GB of the RAID was around 230 MB/s.

I considered going with one Velociraptor, but I was able to get better performance with 2x 7200.12 drives, for $50 less and have 7x the drive space. Now, I did not consider getting two Velociraptors for a RAID 0. Though the performance would be nice (and comparable to the 7200.12 setup), I could not justify the cost. If I was going to spend that much, then I would just consider going with a single SSD and get even faster performance than Velos in RAID 0.