apj101

thats pretty negligable and can save from a hdd death
you can run 5 fine with 3 drives? altough parity generation can impact overall performance. I had raid 5 set up on my desktop for a while while using large datasets, i used only 3 300gb drives

__________________
What did one snow man say to the other?
can you smell carrot?

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

How you do anything, is how you do everything!

ride3k

if i were to go RAID 0 i wouldn't do it for performance, i would do it so i had access to both hdd's off of one volume. but i won't be going RAID anyway's now b/c i dont want to have to buy two new drives, i'm just going to get one large drive for storage

PohTayToez

Ha! That shows how much Alienware overprices. The difference between a 7200RPM 80GB and a 5400RPM 80GB should be like $30 max.

__________________
Desktop / Laptop
AMD Athlon 3200+ @ 2.50Ghz / AMD Athlon X2 TK-53 @ 1.70Ghz
MSI GeForce 7800GT / GeForce Go 6150
2 x 512MB DDR / 2 x 1GB DDR2
250GB SATA II / 80GB 5400RPM SATA
2 x DVD Burner / 8X DVD±R/RW

apj101

best option by far

with raid 0 if either drive dies you lose all data!! and with min 2 drives in the array the half life of your array is dramatically cut

__________________
What did one snow man say to the other?
can you smell carrot?

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

How you do anything, is how you do everything!

ride3k

alienware upgrade is only like 160, but i didn't get to choose the laptop, it was a gift. i was a bit off with the 250+ statement, lol, but the price difference for the same size 7200 drive isn't worth it for me, i need the space more than the speed.

this is buying a sata150 2.5" drive btw, not upgrading on the alienware website

[-0MEGA-]

I didnt even look to see if this was in the notebook section, I was assuming it was a desktop, so ignore my previous post.

I had RAID0 on my build before, but I had to get rid of it so I can install XP. To be honest I didnt notice much of a difference, except transferring files was a bit quicker.

__________________
Desktop // Laptop
Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 4.0GHz // Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz
Asus Rampage Formula X48 // Intel PM45
ATI 4870X2 2GB GDDR5 // 512MB GDDR3 9800M GTS
4GB (2x 2GB) DDR2 940 // 4GB DDR3 800
750GB SATAII w/32MB // 200GB SATAII 7200RPM
Creative SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
SilverStone 750W +12V@60A
3DMark06: 21391 // 9179

bluedishwasher

Why not get an external drive? just a suggestion

__________________
- Jon

ride3k

i thought of getting an external drive, but decided against it. I don't want to have to take my external drive with me, i already have enough to carry around with the laptop, lol.

I do have an external drive that i use for backup though on my work and my music

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Laptop/------------/Desktop
/------------------/Gigabyte X38-DS4
1.8ghz/------------/E8400 3.0ghz
7900GS go/--------/8800GTS 512mb
2gb RAM/----------/2gb DDR2 800 CL4
DVD +RW/---------/DVD +RW
160gb x2 in RAID0/-/320gb hdd
17" 1440x900/-----/19" Samsung 906BW
/-----------------/550w Active PFC psu
/-----------------/AC Freezer Pro 7