Looking for 2 Harddiscs, Boot and Storage (that are quiet)

jozi

I'm looing at upgrading my hd's soon but i have some criteria for them.

For storage i was going to go with a 250gig Samsung Spinpoint, my 2nd drive now is samsung and its serving me well so far (more quiet than my maxtor to).

For my windows drive im not sure what to get. I dont need it for storage, just windows and programs/games. I'd like to speed up boot process and game loading etc and was looking at a Raptop but are they really worth the money, 74gigs for more than the price of a 300+gig drive, and how quiet are they?
I'm going to attempt to make my pc more quiet over the course of the summer but thats a different thread

Drives have to be SATA or even SATA2 (is there even a performance difference?), i think my mobo suports that at least - DFI Lanparty UT.

Jozi

Cuddlesworth

No hardrives really take advantage of Sata2 so its a moot point. As for raptor in day to day use, and with game load times its amazing. I have a 74gig as a boot in both my pcs and I will never go back to normal drives again. But it is very loud for a drive.

jozi

krazy_8s wrote:

But it is very loud for a drive.

:mad: was affraid of that being the case.

I wasnt going to even concider RAID because (I know nothing about it) i think 2 drives used as 1 is a ;ittle bit of a waste (i am understanding this raid thing right?).

But then again a raptor is E170 for 74gig where as 2 of these is 2X80gigs for E120. My question with that is are they faster in RAID than a single Raptor?
As for noise, if anyone can recomend a resonable priced hd thats quiet please advice.

Cheers,
Jozi

mp3guy

jozi wrote:

But then again a raptor is E170 for 74gig where as 2 of these is 2X80gigs for E120. My question with that is are they faster in RAID than a single Raptor?

Just bear in mind those 80GB hard drives are actually only 74GBb themselves aswell.

jozi

Had not taught of that. 80gig is more than enough for a windows and programs drive only. Less would do as well only lesser gb drives cost more per gb.

What sort of performance is to be expected from 2 drives as above in RAID compared to 1 raptor?

astrofool

and the 74gig raptor is actually about 68gb

jozi

Just as a taught.

If i have 2 drives in a raid array is it possible to have another (3rd) drive just for storage ie not in the array?

TwoShedsJackson

I have a Samsung spinpoint 250gb hard disk in the machine I just built and it is definitely a very quiet drive, much quieter than the Maxtor thats also in there. Access times etc also seem extremely fast, havent benchmarked it or any of that but its definitely faster than the Maxtor.

WizZard

jozi wrote:

Just as a taught.

If i have 2 drives in a raid array is it possible to have another (3rd) drive just for storage ie not in the array?

Yes.
I would recommend Seagate's for silence - i've had them in the past and loved them.
The raptors are superb for speed, but they are loud

Check out www.storagereview.com and www.silentpcreview.com

Dooom

I've seen on a few forums about the place that the Samsung Spinpoint drives are supposed to be excellent both in performance and noise level.

riptide

I'll agree with the above re raptors. Have 2x for Raid0 and A 160 Maxtor for a Disk clone backup. A bit noisy. Had a Seagate before. Very very quite. Actually the one I had was pratically inaudible,

jozi

I was under the impression samsung where the most quiet, the one i have is at least, but they dont seem to be as good a performer as Hitachi drives.

From browsing storagereviews forum i also read RAID 0 give no performance boost for gaming apps compared to a single drive, it could even be worse performance and higher risk of data loss (which im not to worried about)

So that means either i use my curent 160gig for windows and get a 250gig drive like i intended to do.
Or get a raptor, which isnt really a quiet drive

Jozi

EDIT: it was hitachi or seagate that had better performance, i forget already from what i read earlier

conzy

Spike wrote:

I've seen on a few forums about the place that the Samsung Spinpoint drives are supposed to be excellent both in performance and noise level.

I have a Samsung Spinpoint as my storage drive its very quiet, I have a raptor for my games/programs/OS and its not loud but audible