Does this HDD configuration make sense?

[l3randonf]

Would it be smart to have a small 50 gig SATA 7200 RPM drive just for the Windows 7 operating system....

and then 2 other HDD's, lets say.... 500 gigs a peice.... configured for Raid 0?

I'm thinking that I could have that one HDD just for windows in case I got a bunch of adware and viruses and crap somewhere down the line and I just wanted to nuke the HDD without losing all my games and music on the Raid 0 drives.

Is this logical thinking?

I'm a noob..so..I'm just speculating here....

 

[hunter315]

I wouldnt put it on a small HDD, a 50GB drive is going to be very slow, the current high speed drives are using 500GB platters. If you want an OS drive i would suggest a small cheap SSD instead, it will be small, easily nukable if needed, and much faster than a HDD.

 

[keytthom]

its unlikely that you will find a very decent hdd that is 50gb, you are better branching out, and getting a ssd,, say 60gb as your boot drive, then a 500-1000gb drive for "data", this is safer than raid0. just an idea, its how mine are configured anyway and its super shpeeedie

 

[Shadow703793]

Do they even make 50GB SATA2 drives? I think the OP may be confusing partition vs HDD?

 

[das_stig]

I would go for a 128GB SSD and a couple of good size drives in raid-1 for data security.

 

[l3randonf]

I would go for a 128GB SSD and a couple of good size drives in raid-1 for data security.

Correct me if I am wrong here... Raid 1 is where one HDD makes a mirror copy of the other HDD right? It's basically like a constant backup being made all the time?

In Raid 1 do you see any performance and speed increases over running just one HDD?

Also, SSD's are faster than the fastest HDD's? Is there a reason, besides lower price, that someone would want a HDD over a SSD?

Why a 128 gig SDD when it is just for the operating system? Why won't a 40 gig SDD do?

Thanks for all clarification.

 

[Timop]

ok correct me if I am wrong here... Raid 1 is where one HDD makes a mirror copy of the other HDD right? It's basically like a constant backup being made all the time?

In Raid 1 do you see any performance and speed increases over running just one HDD?

Also, SSD's are faster than the fastest HDD's? Is there a reason, besides lower price, that someone would want a HDD over a SSD?

RAID 1 actually decreases performance somewhat, but theoretically halves the failure rate.

On SSDs, they are MUCH faster than HDDs, even the the new raptors cant touch a mid-range SSD. While a Sandforce based SSD would even blow enormous RAID0 arrays away.

The downside is cost and capacity, as SATA SSDs usually go up to only 256GB. Also it should be used with Win7, as older versions of windows doesnt support TRIM and other optimization technologies.

For a boot drive, 40GB is perfect enough, 32GB should even work.

 

[l3randonf]

RAID 1 actually decreases performance somewhat, but theoretically halves the failure rate.

On SSDs, they are MUCH faster than HDDs, even the the new raptors cant touch a mid-range SSD. While a Sandforce based SSD would even blow enormous RAID0 arrays away.

The downside is cost and capacity, as SATA SSDs usually go up to only 256GB. Also it should be used with Win7, as older versions of windows doesnt support TRIM and other optimization technologies.

For a boot drive, 40GB is perfect enough, 32GB should even work.

Ok even a SATA based SDD is much faster? I just stumbled upon PCI-E based SSD and they look to write almost up to 1 gig/s ? LOL.

 

[Timop]

Ok even a SATA based SDD is much faster? I just stumbled upon PCI-E based SSD and they look to write almost up to 1 gig/s ? LOL.

The OCZ Z-drivess? Theyre essentially a bunch of little SSDs in RAID0, it is hyper fast and gives you loads of bragging rights, though after a certain speeds things gets pretty redundant for a normal consumer (like 12-core CPUs, DDR3 2166RAM, etc.), spending $1000 for 2 seconds less of loading time isn't very smart.

The fastest consumer HDD, the WD Raptor can only read up to 150MB/s, while some SSDs can easily approach 280MBs (which is pretty close to the bandwidth limit of SATA2.)

How much do you want to spend?

 

[Shadow703793]

^ There is suppose to be a "consumer" version of the OCZ ZDrive released for ~$400 or so next year, or so the rumors say. At any rate, the OCZ Z Drive is aimed at servers that need extremely fast access, more than normal SSDs can offer.