Advice wanted: New hard drive(s)

Published 10/24/08

Filed under: Technology

So my hard drive is making noise. This is a warning to me. I’ve backed it up completely, so I’m not worried about data loss, but I’m debating the replacement and looking for advice.

Let’s say I want 500GB. Here are my options:

1. Buy one 500-GB drive. Simple, inexpensive, easy.

2. Buy two 250-GB drive and put them in a RAID-0 configuration for more speed. (My motherboard makes that easy.) I have a solid backup plan in place, so I’m not worried about the increased failure risk. This is moderately more expensive and more complex.

3. Buy two 400-GB drives and use the built-in Intel Matrix Storage system to create a RAID-10 system. It combines RAID-0 speed with RAID-1 redundancy, but at the cost of some space — that 800 GB would really be only 500 GB.

[scratching chin] Decisions, decisions. Advice and recommendations?

The Fray

4 responses (add yours)

Vince says:

Simple,

Get what I just bought. An external 2TB mirrored Western Digital. Its really only 1TB, but its mirrored so you get the backup.

October 24th, 2008 at 12:23 PM

gnomic says:

Is disk speed really an issue? New drives are reliable to the point that Raid 0 buys you little if any additional reliability and raid 6-10 buys you more reliability, but more cost and complexity. For even your power user, it is rarely worth it.

Me? I run 2 500GB drives and copy the important stuff off to an external 500GB and burn the occational DVD for the really important stuff as well as stuff that I just want to keep around.

October 24th, 2008 at 2:07 PM

Andrew says:

There is some benefit to running RAID-0, especially when working with larger files, like video (which I do).

Vince: I’m not nearly as interested in security as in speed. I’ve got a nice backup setup, so the security of a redundant drive (RAID-1) isn’t important to me.

So it’s a question of whether spending a little more money (on two 250-GB drives instead of a single 500-GB) is worth it for the extra speed.

All this may be moot if my dying Seagate drive is still under warranty, which I’ll find out this evening.

October 24th, 2008 at 2:14 PM

Dave says:

For the price of drives being so cheap lately it’s hard not to go big. The Western Digital 640AAK’s are cheap, fast, quiet and reliable. Toss 3 into a RAID5 and you’ll have blazing speed with redundancy.

October 27th, 2008 at 8:49 AM