Got two identical 30 gig 5400 rpm HDD's, should I get a raid card or sell it and get a 7200 rpm?

[chevelle396]

which would give me better performance, the two 30 gig 5400rpm hdd's or the single 7200 rpm?

 

[MasterHoss]

I would say the 7200RPM drive will give you a much better performance increase--even if you take advantage of RAID (sustained file transferring, et al, or use some type of RAID 1 array for data saving reasons), I think it's better to get the 7200RPM drive than RAID...get 2 of those and RAID.

 

[TruculentTucan]

The 7200 RPM drive would load programs, OS, etc a lot faster. I would say you should have a 7200 RPM drive for your OS, otherwise you have to wait a lot longer for it to load. Although I have to admit, having 60 gigs of storage space sounds kinda nice.

 

[gygheyzeus]

A lot of people find that two 5400RPM drives in RAID 0 still does not equal the performance of a single 7200RPM drive. If anything, two 7200RPM's in RAID 0 if you've got the cash

 

[chevelle396]

thanks for the help guys, I think I'll get a new 7200!

 

[dave127]

sell them and get a 7200 rpm drive...im pretty sure performance will be better and u dont have to go thru the hassle of settin up the raid

 

[Double Trouble]

Actually, not only will raiding the two 5400 RPM drives not benefit you, it will actually slow them down in most cases. You would be much better of simply using a 7200 rpm drive as your primary drive, and just use the 5400's as MP3 or DiVx storage. If you're running NT 4 or win2k, you could actually set the two 30G drives to be one large logical drives, without having to raid them.

 

[chevelle396]

ok, sounds good. anybody want to buy a WD Caviar 30.7 gig???