Recommend four SATA drives

[Steve]

I'm putting together a workstation and wish to use the onboard Sil3114 RAID. This is the motherboard, and it says RAIDs 0, 1, and 0+1 are available.

Side question: Would RAID 10 be possible? "1" a pair of drives and "0" them to the other two?

I need drives with a balance of capacity and speed, but at a reasonable price. I don't think they need to be Raptors, but they've got to be suitable for the work of dual Opteron 246s, 2GB RAM and a FireGL X1 256. Also, I'm eventually going to sell off this rig, so I need good reliability and quick, painless warranty procedure.

What do you suggest for a max. budget of $600? Ideally under $500 for all four if possible.

 

[shortylickens]

Dont know what they cost but I would not recommend the 250 GB WD caviars.
Normally Western Digital makes good stuff but those SATA are crap.
Had two myself and both died within 6 months. If you search around quite a few other folks had issues too.

It would seem ever since Hitachi took on the deskstar line things have improved for them. You're gonna have to check pricewatch if you want 4 drives for 500 bucks.
You can get 250GB Maxtors for 115-121 each.

 

[BoboKatt]

I now have 200 GB SATA Seagate drives.... both are fantastic, quiet and fast. Also have two 250GB MAxtors and love those.. the 16Meg cache ones. The newer Maxtor 15K scsi (although small in space.. so far i think 36 GIG) are rated for insane durability and years of usage.