Need advice - Hard drive config, New Build,

[Jack500]

Hello,

I will be building my first system and I really could use some advice from all you pros out there.

I have a Corsair 700D case which has a total of 6 HDD trays. I will be using my system mostly for professional work, but eventually for some hard-core gaming.

So far, I have decided on the following
1. 1 Intel G-2 boot drive (maybe a G-3 version if Intel stops playing games and releases it)
2. 4 Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB 7200RPM hard drives

QUESTIONS
1. I'll have an extra hard drive slot available. Should I utilize it for something?
2. What kind of RAID setup / backup configuration would you recommend? Partition? Etc.
3. Any other advice you can offer?

Again, I'm a "newbie" at this so please be gentle. But I am looking for the best configuration possible. Any assistance would greatly be appreciated. Thank you!

Jack500

 

[hcwilli]

Hello,

I will be building my first system and I really could use some advice from all you pros out there.

I have a Corsair 700D case which has a total of 6 HDD trays. I will be using my system mostly for professional work, but eventually for some hard-core gaming.

So far, I have decided on the following
1. 1 Intel G-2 boot drive (maybe a G-3 version if Intel stops playing games and releases it)
2. 4 Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB 7200RPM hard drives

QUESTIONS
1. I'll have an extra hard drive slot available. Should I utilize it for something?
2. What kind of RAID setup / backup configuration would you recommend? Partition? Etc.
3. Any other advice you can offer?

Again, I'm a "newbie" at this so please be gentle. But I am looking for the best configuration possible. Any assistance would greatly be appreciated. Thank you!

Jack500

Good question, I am fairly new at this myself and am upgrading an older system with 2 existing WD Raptor drives and want to use a OCZ Vertex 2 as my boot drive. I have had a hard time finding information on the best RAID setup for this configuration. On another forum somebody suggested I spend some time on the OCZ site and would find my answer there. Perhaps there is also information on the Intel site as well. In any case I hope somebody responds to this and will help us both out.
Thanks for posting good question. If I find a good answer I will post back here.

 

[Jack500]

I guess there's no love in this group...

 

[mosox]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2866/3

You can get 3, set two of the on RAID 0 and a third for storage. The two on RAID 0 will have the total capacity of a single one but they will be faster. Since you'll have a SSD for boot, what apps do you run that need a fast HDD setup?

 

[Jack500]

I want to put Windows 7 64-bit on SDD. MS Office 2010 perhaps?
I don't have any other apps that I need a fast setup, but I'm sure that will change by the end of this year.

What other stuff should I consider placing on SSD boot drive?

 

[mosox]

I would install my games on the RAID HDDs not on the SSD so you don't need a big SSD if you do that.

 

[Jack500]

Best answer selected by Jack500.

 

[hcwilli]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2866/3

You can get 3, set two of the on RAID 0 and a third for storage. The two on RAID 0 will have the total capacity of a single one but they will be faster. Since you'll have a SSD for boot, what apps do you run that need a fast HDD setup?

Thanks Mosox for response,

I was considering putting OS plus a few other programs (Adobe video and photo editing) & games (Warcraft/Starcraft) on SSD for fast boot and use HDD for other.
However I'm concerned because I understand SSD TRIM doesn't work in RAID. What is proper configuration for SSD (1) plus HDD (2 or more).

Look forward to your answers

 

[hcwilli]

I would install my games on the RAID HDDs not on the SSD so you don't need a big SSD if you do that.

By the way, I already have the two WD Velociraptor drives in my system (also a 750GB WD Caviar) and got the new Vertex 2 120GB SSD for my birthday recently.
So given that, what would you do?

I am currently running Vista and I am planning to do a clean load of Windows 7 64 bit when I change the storage configuration.

Thanks again.