Need some advice on storage

[DavidPriced]

Howdy all,

I recently had my hardrive fail on me and i'm now looking for replacement. Basically i use my PC for gaming when its on mostly.

I'm not exactly sure what to look for that makes it good - i mean when i bought my last one, i just thought "ok its got the size i need".

What would you wise people advise on a fast, reliable internal hard drive? I'll be getting it from newegg, as its where i usually get my stuff from. I'll be looking to get 2tb total. Advice would be helpful.

Also wanted opinions on whats the best RAID to have the HDD's in for games? Is there one thats more prefered? I didn't setup RAID on my last HD, i had a friend set it up for me.

And Finally, I've read that some people install their OS on to SSD's. Is it worth it spending extra on SSD's just to install the OS on?

Thanks in advance

David

 

[sminlal]

In terms of helping you to decide whether to buy an SSD or not, I've put together a video that shows a Windows 7 system on an SSD side-by-side with one on a hard drive booting up and starting programs. You can judge for yourself whether the improvement is worth it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTHX0MqVMss

 

[DavidPriced]

wow, thats quite abit of difference! Ok so how big SSD would you advise me getting, any particular brand?

 

[sminlal]

The size depends on how much stuff you want to put on it. For best performance, get one that will hold the OS and your applications with room to spare, and then put all of your data files on a standard hard drive. 80GB should be plenty of room unless you have more applications than most or if one/some of them are pretty large. I use Office, Visio, Visual Studio, Adobe Web Premiere (includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, and other Adobe apps) and a dozen or two smaller apps and my SSD has 55GB of space used.

Intel is still widely regarded as having among the best SSDs, I can recommend them because I use one and am very happy with it.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Hard Drives - Check out the performance charts and pick whatever 500 GB per platter drive performs best under your usage patterns. The 2 TB WD Black and XT from Seagate are good choice but at smaller capacities, you are limited to the Seagate 7200.12 or the Spinpoint F3. The 7200.12 excels in gaming, multimedia and pictures whereas the F3 wins at music and movie maker. See the comparisons here (copy past link in manually, link won't work in forum):

(http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/compare,1006.html?prod[2371]=on∏[2770]=on)

Look at the tests that reflect your usage and choose accordingly.

As for SSD's, gotta like the Vertex 2's and Intel G2's

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2899

100 Gigger for $399
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227529

The Intel X25 160 Gigger is $424
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167024