Should I go RAID?

[kaiku]

Alright, so I'm running out of storage space and I was wondering if I should buy another Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 320GB SATA 3.0 and go RAID with them or just buy a bigger drive and shove it in like the newbie I am.

My motherboard is GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P.

Which way should I go? And if the latter, which drive do you suggest?

EDIT: I should propably mention that I use the computer to play games (FPS and MMO).

 

[Hawkeye22]

I prefer a bigger drive to RAID. If you like your 7200.12, I'd say stick with it. I prefer WD black series drives myself.

 

[ssddx]

personally i love my raid1. zero frustration if you get one hard drive failure.

if you went raid0 (as you would have to if you wanted more space) you are increasing your risk twofold. its suggested to use two identical drives or at the very least two identical capacity and speed ratings. i'm not sure how you would make a raid out of a system that is already up and running on one drive, somone else here may be able to advise.

if you went with a bigger drive why not just bite the bullet and go with a 1tb? i haven't heard anything bad about the WD caviar black 1tb and smaller drives. however, i've noticed higher than normal failure rates with the 1.5tb drives. you can pick one up for about $90-100 (i only paid $115 for my 1.5tb's)

 

[kaiku]

First of all, thanks for the replies.

So in my situation I should pick a bigger drive, if I understood right (I don't like to risk stuff).

I was looking at WD 1TB drives, and was wondering which would be the best choice;

WD Caviar Blue 1TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA II - 65,90 €
WD Caviar Blue 1TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA III - 56,90 €
WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM 32MB SATA 3.0 GB/s - 89,90 €
WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM 64MB SATA 6.0 Gb/s - 80,90 €

I'd like to get away cheap, but I don't mind paying the extra if the Black drives perform that much better than the Blues.

 

[Hawkeye22]

If money is your concern, go with the WD Blue drives. I don't think the difference is worth the extra performance in your case. If you want a longer warranty, then go Black. The blues have a 3 year warranty and the blacks have a 5 year warranty.

 

[ssddx]

WD Caviar Black 1tb 7200rpm 32mb sata 3.0gb/s

that is probably the best drive out of the list for you. performance is better than the blues and it has the longer warranty. completely your choice, i'm just offering my opinion.

if you're worried about risking things, make sure you do regular backups of your data on a source other than your hard drive. hard drives do fail and having a backup elsewhere means the difference between losing it all and shrugging it off without a hitch.

 

[kaiku]

I guess I'll try the Blue SATA II.

Appreciate the help!

 

[marco324]

the newer drives are faster bigger platters there about 2x faster then the 320 drive
the samsung f4 7200 rpm drives are fast the f3 is to about the same as wd if there cheaper
get atleast a 500 gb drive or 1tb drive

 

[popatim]

The new 1TB will be faster than the old 320 even if you raid 0 it, plus install will be less hassles than trying to raid two 320's because you would need to backup the 320, then raid the 2 drives and then reload the backup onto the raid which most software can't do... been down that road myself. In fact the 320 raid is still in my pc along with the newer 1tb raid set.