Anyone running a higher end pc?

[Bob-KhaHan 1]

@Booyah: No, I haven't tried that since there are no RAID controllers that support TRIM (yet), so I'm just using 1 drive. Once SATA 3 comes out SSD is really going to take off because right now the SSD drives are maxed out so that will be when I upgrade to a faster SSD drive.

@spookyturtle: Yes, it is easy to set up. I have my documents, pictures, videos directed to my Data drive and when installing applications that I don't need to run fast, I have make sure it goes on my Program Files partition.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Where's a good place to get a quick education on the various RAID setups? Is raid zero the fastest setup?

I just googled it. It's pretty easy to setup. You just enable raid in bios. Then enter a separate menu during bootup and configure the raid types. Raid zero basically splits the data across all of your drives. As such, it accesses them all at once (much faster performance). Raid five creates parity, which means even if one hard drive was lost, the system will rebuild the data on the new drive once you plug it in (faster than single drive but much slower than raid 0). Once your raid config is setup, it will basically act like virtual hard drives. Your system will only see the hard drives as one drive, the raid drive.

Intel has quite a bit of info on their site about it too, as their chip has it built in. Raid 0 is perfect for what Bob-KhaHan is using his PC for.

You only have to set it up once, then the pc boots normalling into windows? Do you need 4 drives for raid or can you do it with 2? What about the WD VeloRaptor 10,000 rpm drives, have you ever used them?

[Niels Bohr 72]

You can use two drives for raid. Not a problem. Windows will think that the raid set up are just typical storage. Nothing more. Hence, you will boot normally. High RPM count is good, but that is not the only deciding factor.

If for example, the drive has an internal buffer of like 32 mb and the RPMs are 7.2k, you will probably get a perfomance close to that of the 10k drive. What you need to look at for storage performance is the interface type (SATA-I, SATA-II, PATA, or SCSI), buffer, and RPM. You need to look at the entire picture. Or, on most drives, it tells you the access time as part of the box description.

Edited September 24, 2009 by Niels Bohr