Which hard disk drive are you intending to purchase

Hmmm, I've got two WD 640's partitioned exactly the same but want to keep the XP and Vista setups on their own drives.

Things work in half a blink as they are but I wouldn't mind trying a raid setup so I will have to get another two drives.

Thanks for help offer Hairy Coo and I'll probably need some, if and when I get those other drives as I've never attempted a raid setup as yet.

 

what about notebook HDD? i was looking at buying a Toshiba 320 GB for about $120....

 

The HDTune screenshot is really helpful. It shows the graph not dipping but a constant level throughout. @Franklin This means that the whole of the partition and data is kept small enough to be on the edge of the drive so drive speed is at its fastest and will be maintained and not slowdown due to the drive filling up with data.

I will get 2 of these. 3-4 would be great. Are you needing more speed or will those do? I'm sure you fill them up eventually. I believe there's a limit around 450MB as the SATA controller can't do more but you can have 4 before that happens. Switching to a 3rd party decent RAID card gets more but these won't be cheap. We might see better RAID on motherboards when SSD takes off. You get some years of use on the WDigi's before that happens. Here's an article on SSD There also review of 2 x 7200.11 in RAID 0.

 

markymoo

A review here about the WD640 and competitors

A winning move

May eventually get another one-the speed increase would again be remarkable.
The way prices are going down because of competition locally between WD and Samsung -these are a real bargain.

Never mind the wasted space-I just partition so any space wasted partition doesnt show up(by using Tweakui) and I dont feel guilty
Out of sight out of mind.

 

Just ordered a WD 6400AAKS. I was in the market for a larger HDD and couldn't pass it up after reading through this thread and then seeing Newegg's price......$89.99 shipped. Thanks for the heads up.

 

I have 4 of the 6400AAKS drives. They have been great drives since I have owned them. I use them with a Areca 1210 RAID card and they scream. At that price to, they are a steal.

 

They should scream

Would be really interested if you posted your HD Tune Benchmark speeds.

How does the Card compare to an Intel controlled array?

 

I stick with Western Digital "Raptors" for my gaming rig. 10,000rpm of goodness, no other non-SCSI drive can touch it performance wise.

I prefer Seagate Cudas for other rigs, and secondary drives....for their reliability. Performance is average, but they run cool, quiet, and in my long experience with every hard drive under the sun over many years of working in the IT industry..they have shown be the highest reliability rates. (WD Caviars are also very reliable)

 

NewEgg has the WD Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for $90 - $5 (with code EMCAHCFAD) = $85 with free shipping.....



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218


think this is the one you guys were talking about....not sure how long it will
last as its on the front page of one of those "good deal" websites...

 

Solid state as soon as it is proven and I can afford one. May be around 2050 the way it looks now.

SourMilk out

 

any thoughts on which drive runs cool ? I need another data drive but only have space where it is likely to be hot. I know that solid state would be ideal but the cost is still too high.

 

Would be interested to know how you go about setting that up, as I was considering doing the same thing myself.