HDDs, whats the best balance for gaming/storage?

[Marcos]

I have a ton of media etc, but would also like to play games. Whats a good, cost effective way of handling this?

I thought of having a large but still speedy 200GB for data, and a 74GB raptor for games

Or will a fast 200GB drive be good enough? Do the raptors really boost performance

[Thorsson]

Raptors are definitely faster. But how much faster in a real world situation? I'd rather spend the money elsewhere, but ymmv.

Of course you could go for real speed and get an Ultra SCSI Seagate Cheetah 15K.4...

[Marcos]

Im on budget

So a good 7200rpm 200GB drive should be good?

[funnelhead]

Personally i prefer the seagates as they're the quietest drives, but the new Drive from Maxtor is meant to be really good. The Diamondmax 10 has a top capacity of 300 gigs and (heres the kicker) a 16mb buffer. This puts it to the top of the field in most situations.

It's not as fast as the raptor, for sure, but for £132 you get a very speedy 300gigs.

or the 250gig maxtor with 16mb is £111, but at lower capacitys than that the cache drops to 8mb.

74 raptor + 200 gig maxtor - £120 + £72 = £192 for 274 gigs.

theres no denying that a raptor + 200 storage would be much cooler and faster...... for a start it would be faster just because 2 drives = seeking 2 things at once. i mean who wouldnt want that combo? But if money is tight the maxtor is a speedy alternative.

It's just a pity they dont make the 36gig raptor to the same specs they make its bigger brother.

link to HD's:
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/product...px?GroupID=596
link to storagereview:
http://www.storagereview.com/article...300S0-2_8.html

hope this gives food for thought.

f

[Marcos]

I already have one 160GB samsung spinpoint. But i cant test its performance as i dont have a system to run it on yet. At the moment its in an external enclosure, and its nearly filled with data.

That 250GB + 74GB raptor sounds like a good deal, and the raptor is a good price too, i thought it would be more.

EDIT: I just realised the raptor is £120 ouch

[BenW]

I would say get another Samsung 160 or 120 and raid them so its 1 fast 320GB or 280GB Drive!

Another drive = £60-£70 + RAID controller if you dont have it on your mobo

[Marcos]

The current 160GB i have is IDE, also, im planning on going the shuttle route, probably SN95G5 or SK83G. They have SATA and Raid.

1x 74gb raptor alone would be faster than 2 of the other drives in RAID ? I'd rather have a 'games' drive and a 'data' drive separate i think

[Apex]

The raptor will get hot though adding to the overall system temps.

Get the sata samsung or seagate

[Marcos]

7200rpm SATA it is

[Apex]

Good choice !

[Marcos]

Im liking my samsung right now, i'd probably get the samsung SATA version. I need a quiet HD, but good performance

[BenW]

Yup, go for Samsung! I'm thinking about getting a 120 or 160IDE version soon

[TooNice]

1x 74gb raptor alone would be faster than 2 of the other drives in RAID

I would say yes, but only for application that do not rely heavily on sequential read/write (most apps). 1x Raptor will lose for benchmark that relies heavily on sequential transfers, and Windows boot speed. Both of which are bragging right than anything else. Video editing is another area where RAID would have an advantage.

Oh and I am assuming you mean RAID-0.

If you want the ATA route.. Well, the Hitachi is still leading in performance:
http://storagereview.com/php/benchma...1=244&devCnt=2

Actually, I'd say its pretty one sided, save the noise/temperature. The later would probably be more of an issue though. Plus, its better to have two identical drive if you really want to RAID..

[Marcos]

Heres my approximate planned spec:

Shuttle SN95G5
AMD 64 Skt939 3000
512 (initially) RAM
6800 128mb

Would a samsung 7200rpm drive be a bottleneck at all?

[Apex]

Nope.

[Marcos]

Hmm, this forum has been pruned, did the database crash? Ive lost some posts