Buying A hard drive

[snoopyep]

hey i was going to put together a pc and i just realised that theres so many types or drives lik ata , pata sata and sata 2 .. lol obviously sata2 is the best i think.
i was planning to get 2 hard drives. one would bo 80gb for the system files and window etc and 320gb would be for stuff and etc lol

and what i dont get is setting up the raid and etc.. could i do raid 10? Or what is the best raid i could do ?

 

[paparazi]

A few questions lol:
For a standard desktop machine? then yes, SATAII (if your motherboard supports it) would be the best.

Two drives? for Raid you would be advised to buy indentical drives for best performance and compatibiliy.
As far as "the best" Raid, well that depends on what you want, ie: best for performance, best for security of your data?
Obviously the Raid Controller on your motherboard determines what "Raid" configurations are possible.

Martin

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[paparazi]

I would just add that the different Raid configurations not only have different benefits in terms of performance or safety but also risks dipending on which configuration you choose.
Raid0 is possibly the quickest but also the riskiest ie: if one drive fails data is lost off all the drives.
Safer configs can be sellected but generally they are not as quick.
Martin

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[snoopyep]

Well im just trying to build my own pc for my uni work(cuz im jus startin uni this year) and games and whatever i can think of lol
here ill post you te specs of the pc that im going to buy

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2.4GHz, LGA775

Seagate 80GB Seagate Barracuda 8MB 7200rpm NCQ SATAII
Seagate 320GB Seagate Barracuda 16MB 7200.10 SATAII NCQ

Corsair XMS2 2 x 1Gb DDR2-800

nVidia GeForce 7950 GT 512MB, PCI-Express

Asustek P5B Intel P965, Pentium D and Core 2, ATX

Samsung 19" 940N Black LCD monitor

LiteOn SOHW-1693S Dual Layer 16X

Creative Inspire P5800 5.1 Speakers

Sagitta Gaming Case (Silver) Side Window 520W ATX 2.0 PSU

When you said i need two identical for raid ,, does that mean i need two drive with the same brand and also same size. lol

I think this raid thing is becoming a problem for me because i dont know whats the good one and not. Could i just connect the hard drives and just use it like that without any config or do all pcs have to choose their raid ? If raid 0 is not safe, what about raid 1 and raid 0+1 . Could i do a raid 10 on my pc if i found a motherboard that supports this? Cuz in this website (

http://www.bytepile.com/raid_class.php#10

) raid 10 is said to be Very High Reliability combined with High Performance but i need 4 drives.

thx

 

[paparazi]

Given your level of expertise I wouldn't Raid, I would, as you suggest, have one drive for your O/S and programmes, the other as a pure back up/storage.
You might also want to consider an external hard drive as an option, having the ability to remove the drive safely away means that any precious work is not effected by hardware failure or virus attack as well as having the advantage of being able to be plugged into any other PC at Uni.
As a secondary storage drive, the performance difference between an internally mounted HDD and an external USB2/firewire drive is minimal but the benefits are many.

Martin



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[snoopyep]

yea i think ur rit,.. ill jus have 2 hard drives ,.. one for the o/s and the other to put my stuff in so it should be all good. i think raid is for those business companies for safety and protection etc huh..

well thx for ur help and ill have a look at external drives as u suggested thx

 

[snoopyep]

And i forgot i wanted to ask you,... if i get an external hard drive , do i put my o/s in it ? And wot about games and all that .. do i put it in that drive too? Cuz i was thinking of putting the o/s in a diff drive so it would be easy for me to format my pc if i need to. And im not sure if the external hard drive would be able to take it if i play games and etc from it .

 

[paparazi]

Personally I would install my OS and programmes on the one smaller/faster drive (including games) then everything else (photographs/music/work/movies) on the larger secondary drive.

Use some sort of imaging software to create a recovery image of the Boot Drive (smaller drive) once you have updated everything.

You will still need to back up data from the second storage drive as you would normally.

Many gamers favour a Western Digital Raptor for their boot/games drive and a larger/slower drive for general use.
(Raptors are a little expensive) so a small 80gig SATAII but with 16meg cache would be the next best thing.

Martin

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[snoopyep]

Why do you say gamers favour a Western Digital Raptor for their boot/games drive and a larger/slower drive for general use.
Why cant they jus use a fast drive all the way.
My friend was telling me western Digital isnt that good and i shoud stay away from it , so i chose seagate

here are the drives that i was looking at:

Seagate 80GB Seagate Barracuda 8MB 7200rpm NCQ SATAII
Seagate 320GB Seagate Barracuda 16MB 7200.10 SATAII NCQ

 

[paparazi]

snoopyep
"Why do you say gamers favour a Western Digital Raptor for their boot/games drive and a larger/slower drive for general use"
I like Seagates as well but there is nothing wrong with Westerndigitals either.
Raptors are favoured by gamers because of fast load times due to their ultra fast 10,000rpm spin speed.
The down side is they are a little noisey, run fairly hot and cost considerably more money.
Listening to your replies I can tell you are not overly impressed by WD and that you are not necessarily interested in the speediest, so I agree, go with a standard SATAII drive as you specified, I was just offering an option.




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[snoopyep]

yea thx for ur help, i appreciate ur advice and stuff. But i would unlikely get that 10 000rpm disc drives cuz over here its just toooooo expensive... anyways thx again