Questions on new system

[Saracen]

By "resilience", I was actually talking about the data, not the drive itself. RAID (5) gives me the confidence that I can lose a drive and still not lose the data.

I'm still thinking about the exact mechanics of this, because currently, I've got the comfort factor of the critical stuff on each server being backed-up to the other server by a scheduled backup, and then the nearline and offline backups supporting that. But if I consolidate both old servers into one new one, I lose that. The solution may well be a NAS box to give the scheduled backups in place of one server.

As for how to maximise drive life, good point. A long time ago I was involved in some tests with a US East Coast bank. They did extensive testing and error rates showed that their PCs lasted a lot longer if left on24/7 (with monitors powered down) than they did if turned off at night and turned on the following morning. This was put down to the mechanical stresses of spinning up drives, and the voltage surge when powering up circuitry.

However, it was years ago and before drives started powering themselves down internally, and when MTBF was a lot lower than it is today, and when technology was much less polished (drives, for instance, were 20MB, and I DO mean MB, not GB). So I'm far from convinced that what was true then is necessaily still true today.

I take onboard what you say about Raptors. I'll give it some thought, but I suspect you're right and it's the way to go.

Thanks, Zak.

[Apex]

Saracen, you have basicly answered your own questions , anyway

1) Has pointed out soemthing like the X19xx range from ATI would be a good comprimise, but so would the 7600GT.

How much are you likely to play games ? and is it worth chasing after a high end card if games have nothing to do with it?

2) Enermax, Corsair, Seasonic, FSP, Tagan, PC Power n Cooling.

All good brands of psus and you can not go wrong with them.
Look for the ones with 120mm fans as these will spin slower while still providing the cooling needed.

Look for modular, this way only the cables you needed are pluged in.

I've never had problems with Enermax PSU's but peoples milage may vary.

3) No point in getting the Dominator stuff, it's over kill for you from what i have seen, might be better to save the cash and go for more ( 4gib ?) esp usefull for movie and photo work

4) Sadly i can not help much on this has i still use a 21" Sony CRT for all of my photo work, but i hear good things bout LG / iiyama / Viewsonc and even Sharp

5) This is a tricky one...... Seagates are good and not too expensive, but i still consider Samsungs to be cooler and quieter then any others and you can now get 320 and 500 gb Spinpoint T's.

The Raptor idea is one i have been thinking of.
I am looking at buying a NAS box to offload the 350gig of data i currently have on my data drive in this shuttle to the nas where at least it will be in raid and i don't have to worry about a dead disk.

With the data drive removed i could then place a 150gig Raptor in this rig and it would be plenty for me, it would speed up XP boot up, loading times of the apps, loading of games and basicly the response of windows will be snappier.

I've seen a few configs with the Raptors in and they are worth it in the long run.

I've seen it where they had 2 36gig raptors in raid for boot drive, 2 36 gig ( or bigger) raptors in raid for apps then a shed load of other drives raided for the data, there are many ways to do what you want to and i would adv you to give the Raptors a chance

End of the day it's your money but it looks like your building a Rig to last a while so invest now and reap the rewards.

ps don't give up on the scsi, it still kicks sata raids ass anyday and with the ammount of kit turning up on ebay you could make your self a very nice raid box