hard drive gaming advice

[chesterfield]

need some advice-not a gamer but helping my brother buy a dell xps for his going off to college age kid to game with.
what hd set up is best?
1-80g ata100 and 1-160sata
or
2-160 sata in raid 1 as dell rep suggests? (as backup for homework, etc.)

Isnt it better to have os on the ata and games on the sata?
Thanks in advance to all the gamers with advice-if some other setup (including 2 drives/no raid 0 because of the homework issue-too much risk of loss) is better please chime in.

[Bizkitkid2001]

edit, nvm read htat wrong

I would go for the two 160gb sata drives. More storage and raid is faster.

[chesterfield]

edit for your edit

[chesterfield]

wrong again-raid 1 is slower-keep your bad advice to yourself-any others with informed opinions?

[Bizkitkid2001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chesterfield

wrong again-raid 1 is slower-keep your bad advice to yourself-any others with informed opinions?

Excuse me, but i am NOT mistaken. http://www.acnc.com/04_01_01.html

If you feel I am mistaken, don't just blantantly say that I shouldn't talk, but provide proof of how I am mistaken.

Look at the name of this forum, TechIMO, IMO= In My Opinion (THis case its a fact)

[Mike]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chesterfield

wrong again-raid 1 is slower-keep your bad advice to yourself-any others with informed opinions?

Be nice...

[chesterfield]

my apologies-but i am sure that is not the best solution
cpu overhead
same write rate/twice read rate/inefficient use of storage

[Bizkitkid2001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chesterfield

my apologies-but i am sure that is not the best solution
cpu overhead
same write rate/twice read rate/inefficient use of storage

Since this computer will msot likely be used to store colledge projects and papers, a more secure raid 1 setup is prefferred becasue of the less likley chance of data loss if a hard drive fails.

Now depending on how DELL sets up there RAID 1, they could get it to use hardley any extra CPU cycles by going with a hardware raid setup. Now if they use a software raid program, then will performance belost because the CPU will have to do allt he calculation. Software raid will likley be what dell would stay away from, especially with this being there fastest top of the line computer, they will do anything to get it as fast as they can.

THe only thing the kid loses by going raid is 80gbs of storage. But for gaming and saving colledge paper works, 160gb is mroe than enough.

[PresterJohn]

i would not run raid at all....not really needed. you're losing 160gb of space and incurring more cost if you're going w/a hardware raid card.

it would be cheaper and nearly as safe just running two separate drives...just set up a simple batch file (using a utility like xxcopy) to copy the data from one drive to the other.

[VHockey86]

I'd just got with a single 160gig SATA
Sure RAID is nice but I dont think its worth the money. As long as he is smart and backs stuff he will be fine.