use raptors in raid0 i already have or phase them out?

[hammurabi]

Okay, so I know there is plenty of debate on whether or not raid0 is even of any benefit, unless i'm manipulating huge files and such. None the less, on my old build i had two WD 740GDs in raid0. Keep in mind these are the older 8mb cache ones, not the later 16mb ones. So i"m building my new system, and i have a new WD 640GB drive for the new build. Now I have to decide what to do with the old drives.

It's been recommended to me that I keep the two raptors in raid0 and use that as an OS/app drive, what with the good random access times, and just use the 640 for storage. What do all of you think of this? I mean, I already have the drives. Or, does the new 640GB drive's improvements in factors other than random access dictate that I should just use the new drive as the lone drive in the system. I know striping can actually decrease random access times, so maybe I should just use one of the raptors and just put the os on it. And lastly, if I do use the raid0 config for OS/apps, is 16k striping the way to go, given the average size of dll files and all that?

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Keep the raptors since multiple drives increase speed. Put an OS on any drive and use the others to hold specific things. Reading two things from two drives is significantly faster than reading two things from one drive.

 

[hammurabi]

depends on the drives in question, what types of files will be accessed, what sizes, what stripe size, etc. Sequential reads are actually probably faster on the 640gb drive, it's the best 7,200 rpm drive out there i think. it's the random access speeds of the raptors that are important in this specific case with the specific application of an OS drive. if i was manipulating really big files(like in video editing) the raptors, even in raid 0, might not be a good choice