Using 2 - 2.5" WD Scorpio Blacks - 320gig in Desktop

[Bacstar]

I'm in the process of upgrading my desktop at home and am thinking of using my 2 spare WD drives to replace some aging HDD's. I'm finally going to retire my 35gig Raptors or just leave them in there until they fail. I mainly use them as my game drive array anyway. I also have a 3.5" WD 320gig drive but I'm not sure what model it is at this time. It's about 1 1/2 yrs old.

After reading some reviews on the motherboard, the ASUS Crosshair III Formula, the HDD controller is an all raid or no raid option. I'd like to keep the Raid setup, so instead of buying two new drives, I'd like to use the laptop drives in Raid 0 and use them as my boot drives as well. How does everyone think it'll work performance wise or should I just forego raid?

 

[Denithor]

As long as the Scorpios are 7200rpm you shouldn't notice much (any) difference from standard desktop drives.

 

[Blain]

Access times on the Scorpios won't be as fast as normal 3.5" HDs.

 

[Voo]

Access times on the Scorpios won't be as fast as normal 3.5" HDs.

Wouldn't that solely depend on the RPM? I mean the raptors and (correct me if I'm wrong) most 15k SAS drives are 2.5" form factor, so that alone shouldn't make any difference.

 

[Bacstar]

Access times on the Scorpios won't be as fast as normal 3.5" HDs.

Here are the hardware spec's I pulled off at Newegg:

3.5" WD Scorpio Blue 320gig

Average Seek Time 8.9ms
Average Write Time 10.9ms
Average Latency 4.2ms


2.5" WD Scorpio Black gig

Average Seek Time 12ms
Average Latency 5.5ms
Not sure why write time isn't listed.

Will a few milliseconds be that big a deal in real-world use? oh...and the Scorpio Blacks are 7200rpm drives.