Which Hard Drive to go for?

A

Ari Oppenheimer

Hi,
I want to buy as new hard drive but have a dilemma:

I have the following options:
1) Buy 1X 160GB SATA hard drive - $130
2) Buy 2X 80GB EIDE drives and use RAID - $110
3) Buy 2X 80GB SATA hard drive and use RAID - $160

Between the first 2, does SATA go faster than EIDE RAID or does EIDE RAID go
quicker than a serial ATA solution.

Depending on which you recommend from the 1st 2, is it worth the price
difference to get the 3rd option. Its almost $50 more.

Please advise on which of the above I should look into, or, if you have more
recommendations, please let me know.

Thank you
 
P

philo

Ari Oppenheimer said:
Hi,
I want to buy as new hard drive but have a dilemma:

I have the following options:
1) Buy 1X 160GB SATA hard drive - $130
2) Buy 2X 80GB EIDE drives and use RAID - $110
3) Buy 2X 80GB SATA hard drive and use RAID - $160

Between the first 2, does SATA go faster than EIDE RAID or does EIDE RAID go
quicker than a serial ATA solution.

Depending on which you recommend from the 1st 2, is it worth the price
difference to get the 3rd option. Its almost $50 more.

Please advise on which of the above I should look into, or, if you have more
recommendations, please let me know.
Click to expand...


what do you want
storage space ,speed or security?

you did not specify
 
K

kony

Hi,
I want to buy as new hard drive but have a dilemma:

I have the following options:
1) Buy 1X 160GB SATA hard drive - $130
2) Buy 2X 80GB EIDE drives and use RAID - $110
3) Buy 2X 80GB SATA hard drive and use RAID - $160

Between the first 2, does SATA go faster than EIDE RAID or does EIDE RAID go
quicker than a serial ATA solution.

Depending on which you recommend from the 1st 2, is it worth the price
difference to get the 3rd option. Its almost $50 more.

Please advise on which of the above I should look into, or, if you have more
recommendations, please let me know.

Thank you
Click to expand...

What's important to you?
Performance, reliability, storage capacity, backward compatibility,
price? Of course you can't have the best of all of those choices so
your particular preferences and intended storage and system usage must
be considered. The following isnt' an all-inclusive overview but just
a few thoughts:

#3 is fastest but unless you have another board with same SATA RAID
controller, it's not backwards compatible or particularly reliable,
being a RAID 0.

#2 is slower than #3, could be faster or slower than #1 depending on
the exact drives and how much you use the PCI bus for other devices...
It's best to avoid placing drives on a PCI bus based controller when
utmost performance is desired.

#1 is most reliable by doing without the RAID 0, most compatible with
another system should your motherboard fail, though PATA would be even
moreso. It's a good standard configuration but for some uses you'd
benefit from having a 2nd drive for backup purposes or greater
performance... some tasks benefit more from 2 independant drives than
the same two drives in a RAID 0 array... for example video editing
source/destination or pagefile location if the machine has too little
memory.



Dave
 
P

Phrederik

I'd like to know the same thing...

Order of importance...
1) QUIET!
2) COST
3) FAST
4) COOL
5) RELIABILITY
6) SPACE

Considering a pair of SATA WD 72gig Raptors running RAID 0. Cost seems a bit
prohibitive though and not sure how warm these things get.
 
A

Ari Oppenheimer

Hi,
Original Poster here.
I kinda already have a clear view of how much space I want. I want 160GB.

The only factors that I am concerned with is with speed/price.
I don't really care about the drive being cool, nor do I care how reliable
it is. Noise is also not a factor for me.

There is no way I'll even touch WD Raptors, they are exorbitantly expensive.

By the way, I have an ASUS Nforce 2 motherboard with a built on Serial ATA
controller, supporting both RAID 0 and 1.

Pease let me know your views.
Thanks
 
P

Phrederik

Shep© said:
Maxtor.
Click to expand...

Didn't you see #1... QUIET.

Maxtor makes the noisiest drive on the planet... at least all of mine have
been. Only louder drive I've ever had was an RMA I got back from IBM.
 
K

kony

Didn't you see #1... QUIET.

Maxtor makes the noisiest drive on the planet... at least all of mine have
been. Only louder drive I've ever had was an RMA I got back from IBM.
Click to expand...

Looking backwards, the Plus 9 and Plus 8 have fluid bearings, are
quiet. The D740 was in both fluid and ball-bearing, the fluid was
quiet but the ball-bearing versions were some of the noisiest Maxtors
ever, though at the time they were the fastest *affordable* ATA drives
available. Further back the Diamondmax Plus 60, Plus 40 were about
average noise.

A modern Maxtor is barely louder (insignificant) than a Seagate IIRC,
but a LOT quieter than a WD.

Dave
 
P

Phrederik

Good to know...

Buying local, it isn't such a big deal, but trying to RMA a mail order drive
because of noise if frustrating.
 

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