HDD 10,000 RPM vs 7,200 RPM

[quiescentTrance]

Building a new PC and I'm toying with the idea of going with a super fast hard drive with a lot less space. I'm not too worried about the space, I've got external storage for back ups and long term storage, and will probably get another drive at some point for other storage as well.

My question is which would you reccomend between the two of these - I'm going to be doing RAID 0 for both of them:

2 x Western Digital Raptor SATA 36.7GB ? 112$ each ? 224$
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-200&depa=1

10,000 RPM
5.2 ms seek

or

2 x Seagate SATA 160GB for RAID 0 ? 107$ each ? 214$
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-018&depa=1

7,200 RPM
8.5 ms seek

Now I'm sacrificing 240 Gigs for 10,000 RPM over 7,200 RPM - is it worth it?

What do you guys think?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Go with the 160gb 8mb cache set-up, lot's more storage and the difference in speed between my 36gb Raptor and my 8mb cache deathstar isn't enough to even notice.

 

[JackBurton]

1 x 74GB Raptor for your main drive, and 1 x 250GB drive for your storage. No RAID.

 

[Looney]

Go for the 160GB. The differences in real world performance is very small, certainly not worth the price. Here's Anandtech real world comparison: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2073 ... remember as well that the HDDs there were only 120GB... 160GB and 200GB will have even better performance because the platters are more dense.

 

[jpeyton]

go 160gb, raptors are overrated

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
go 160gb, raptors are overrated

As is RAID-0.
I agree with JackBurton.
The difference between a Raptor and a Cuda 7200.7 might not be what some people expect, but it will be greater than that of a single Cuda vs 2 Cudas in RAID-0, unless your daily work/pleasure involves moving massive files around and such.

 

[quiescentTrance]

Well after reviewing a bunch of articles and threads on RAID-0, it appears that the general consensus is that it is overrated and not worth it unless constantly moving large files around.

In that case, here's the new question:

200 GB Barracuda for 125$ or Raptor 74 GB for 176$? Raptor still overrated in this case?

 

[jpeyton]

Yes. Raptor is snake oil.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Yes. Raptor is snake oil.

Riiiight, you keep on thinking that. I'd take the 74GB Raptor. It is the fastest non-SCSI (meaning EIDE or SATA) hard drive out. If speed is your main concern, look no further than the Raptor.