recommended hard drives for my GA-P67A-UD4-B3

[azzbarb]

hi i have a GA-P67A-UD4-B3, i7 2600k, i'm pleased with this mobo now that i have the b3 model as its very stable for me,
 anyway when building my system i kept the harddrives from my old system 2 x 500 gb sata 2's,1 western digital and 1 maxtor, not sure what models though but they were pretty cheap, i think these are bottlenecking everything else and making things a bit sluggish so i was thinking of getting 2 sata 3's and running them in raid0 (i know the risk but i'm not bothered), i was thinking of getting 2x any of these
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/50658/Seagate-500GB-hard-disk-drive-Barracuda-SATA
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/50024/Western-Digital-500GB-Hard-Disk-Drive-Caviar-Blue
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/47769/WD-Caviar-Black-1-TB-SATA-6-Gb-s-64-MB-Cache-7200
would there be any performace increase over using my old drives?
i've heard that the caviar blacks don't go well in raid0 or would it be better to just have 1?
i can not afford a ssd at this time so any other recommendations would be great,
thanks.

[Aussie Allan]

 Shop around and you will beat these prices you displayed.....

 Microdirect

 Yoyo

 Scan

 Aria........ are the four I use for this type of hardware

 Aussie Allan

 

[azzbarb]

hi, i was just using these as examples, i would shop around,
what would perform better, a single wd black or say 2 wd blues in raid0? or should i just stick with my old drives as there would be not performance increase?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

In general a RAID0 drive will perform better than a standalone drive but in saying that you probably wouldn't notice that much difference unless you went to a SSD.

[Aussie Allan]

    The Green uses 'Intellipower', which is a marketing gimmick which means that it spins at 5200RPM all the time (not 5400) and will stop spinning entirely under certain circumstances to conserve power
Caviar blue = 5400RPM
Caviar Black = 7200RP

    The "Blue's" are cooler and power savi but there's always a trade off.........Blue's have been reported to have issues waking up in some power saving modes or non activity...........and can go off-line compleatly for this reason.....Raiding these would be stressful to say the least.

  Raid0..........if one Sata II drive gives you an average of say 70Mb/s read/write........2 in raid0 (stripping with no parity) will give you double this less about 10%.........3 drives......triple and so on !

  Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

So ten drives would be interesting to put it mildly Allan. 

I agree though in principle. One fast drive is the best way to go and less likely to have problems than a RAID0 array. If you want to go better than the "Blacks" though there are always the Momentous drives. They are much cheaper than a SSD but with all the storage capacity of the standard magnetic drive.

[Aussie Allan]

 Words of wisdom DM   There's only so much you can put in on a post , the restraint often produces a mist of sweat across my forehead, very difficult to just stick to the subject ....

  Just before the Revo went in I had 6 old sata II Samsung Spinpoints (500gb - HD501LJ) under raid........was getting 425Mb/s on a short stroke on the ICH10R..........if you go this path, as in raid0....you really have to have a pretty tight backup and clone program.....software and mental....and a UPS is mandatory.

  Aussie Allan