hard drives and raid

[junglebass]

iv curently got a 30G maxtor 7200; and im kinda short on space...........
i know some1 who wants my 30G so im gona upgrade!

i wanted to go raid0 for a long time but im short on cash now so thinking of waiting...........
is raid0 worth the extra cash? i can get a raid card for $40.. but then I'll need 1 more hd... is the diffrance(1hd or 2 in raid0) really noticable?

for my new drive im gona go with a 80G 7200; cus i think thats the best bang for the buck size wise
here r my choises in Cannadian dollars + tax.........
maxtor 113
segate 116
western digital 115
western digital with 8mb cache 126

what you think? from dealing with maxtors i know they r quiet and i rally hate the noise cheap HDs make..... i dont know jack about others.....
also whats the deal with 8mb cache? iv read somewhere thats its only good if working with big files like movie editing??
which should i get?

[Midknyte]

raid0 increases the risk of data loss, while only marginally improving performance. It's better to just get a fast 8mb cache hard drive.

for more hard drive info, read up at
www.storagereview.com

[dderolph]

Do Canadian retailers ever offer rebates? I just bought a WD 80 GB 8 MB cache 7200 rpm drive for $60, after rebates, at a Best Buy store in Ohio. Actual cost will include sales tax on the full retail price, so I'll end up paying about $65 for it.

[stix_kua]

Originally posted by dderolph
Do Canadian retailers ever offer rebates? I just bought a WD 80 GB 8 MB cache 7200 rpm drive for $60, after rebates, at a Best Buy store in Ohio. Actual cost will include sales tax on the full retail price, so I'll end up paying about $65 for it.

Canadian dollars are not 1:1 with US dollars.

[strat1]

Originally posted by Midknyte
raid0 increases the risk of data loss, while only marginally improving performance. It's better to just get a fast 8mb cache hard drive.for more hard drive info, read up at
www.storagereview.com

Ditto What he said. :rolleyes: !!
I have both set up now on the same PC with little or no noticeable improvements.

I am able to transfer files faster, open large files faster and burn a little faster. That’s it and it is not worth the risk!

I have to defragment my drives a couple times a week because of the Raid 0 seems to be a little unstable.

When, and I mean when not if my Array dies, I will not build another Raid 0 Array—not worth the risk! I would save your $$ for SCSI—that is fast and stable

[Sterling_Aug]

I have a Red Hat Linux server set up at home with two IDE drives and three 9GB 10,000 rpm SCSI Raid 5 drives installed.

The SCSI RAID system is faster and fully fault tolerant (since it is RAID 5, two drives in an 18 GB volume with the third drive as the parity fault tolerance).

Is it worth the extra $350 for the SCSI RAID 5....Hell NO, but I wanted to do it for a learning experience and I will be selling the parts later on and get most of my money back.

[Midknyte]

SCSI RAID 5 is worth having if you're running a server, though. IDE RAID just doesn't have the firepower to compete with SCSI.