2 X 500GB 16MB RAID 0 vs 1 X 1TB 64MB IDE

Raid 0 is generally going to be a faster configuration when comparing hdds with the same rpm.
Just curious--is it hardware or software raid?

Also, if you're going for speed and have some extra space available, you could try short stroking.

Hi!

Thank you for your reply.

It's hardware raid and i'm runing windows 7 64 bit.
My doubt is mainly if the advanced format feature and the 64MB cache will be better than the raid 0.

I posted the wrong link for the second paragraph.
The corrected link is: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/04/01/the...

Forum wouldn't let me edit my previous post for some reason.

The difference in cache sizes won't affect performance significantly; not nearly as much as the difference in read and write speeds you'll generally gain from a raid 0 configuration.

See http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/perf/spec/otherCach... for more information on that.

As far as advanced format, it's a mixed bag that depends on your usage (dealing more with lots of small files or fewer smaller files).
In either case, however, you won't notice significant performance gains; this deals more with allocating physical space on the hdd--not necessarily storage space.
See: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/perf/spec/otherCach... for more information.

Steaming movies and MS Office are not very demanding applications, so you may not need the ultimate HDD speed. Personally, I'm no big fan of RAID0 because of its increased risk of failure and loss, although you are doing regular backups - good for you! But RAID0's main advantage - speed - may be of no real use to you in those applications. On the other hand, the Green line (5400 rpm) of HDD's is slower than the WD Black line (7200 rpm), and that's why they put the 64 MB of cache on the unit - to compensate for the slightly slower seek times. Theoretically, though, streaming movies is a sequential file access mode, and that's where a large cache does its best work to help out.