schmeggin

Hi all,

I want to get the best hard drive performance - but don't need to spend $s just for the sake of it. I use the PC for dev (multithreaded Java apps on app servers), office applications and some video editing (home stuff).

I have read a lot about RAID and WD Raptors and looked at the benchmarks - but really believe some of this is just marketing hype. Whether the max transfer rate or some biased benchmarks show this to be faster than that, what I am concerned with is real-world performance.

Basically, here are the set-ups that I need to choose between:
1. 1 WD Raptor 10000rpm for OS, 2 X Seagate 7200.7 80GB NCQ RAID 0 for data
2. 1 WD Raptor 10000rpm for OS, 1 Seagate 7200.7 160GB NCQ for data
3. 1 Seagate 7200.7 160GB NCQ for OS & data

Option 1&2 come in about $200US. Option 3 is about $100US. A lot of reports that I have read put the Seagate 7200.7 NCQ very close to the WD Raptor 10000rpm in all real-world situations (but not in max transfer speed).

RAID 0 is supposed to have minimal gains in the sort of scenarios that I use the computer in.

So what do people recommend in terms of real-world use and not biased benchmarks?