Raid Performance question

[kittle]

My current setup looks like this:

supermicro P4DC6+ dual xeon motherboard
512mb ram
WD 36gig 10krpm scsi drive w/4mb cache
WD 181gig 10krpm scsi drive w/16mb cache
Onboard u160 adaptec scsi controller
Running win2k server.
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Im looking at changing to the following configuration:

WD 18gig 10krpm scsi drive
TWO 36gig 10krpm scsi drives
zero channel raid controller (yes my mobo supports this).

setup the 2 36gig drives in a raid stripe configuration.
put OS and related files on the 18gig drive.
the 181gig drive is moving to another box.
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What im looking to see is a HUGE (5x or so) increase in read performance on the striped drives. For normal activites, my current setup is fine. But when I start shuffling large (700mb) files around, zipping and unzipping stuff, disk performance just dies.

Ideas? suggestions?

[sechs]

Get Maxtor, Seagate, or Fujitsu drives. Western Digital and SCSI really shouldn't be mentioned together.

[Cyberlore]

Western Digital and hard drive really shouldn't be mentioned together.

[kittle]

That bad eh?

My WD drive that I got back in 1995 is still running nicely. not all that roomy anymore, but it goes and goes.

Also.. now that im home where I can actually see things instead of at work trying to remember whats installed...
I have the following <b>segate</b> drives instealled:
ST1181677LWV -- the 181gig drive
ST336706LW -- the 36gig drive.

I'll check out maxtor as an alternative to the segate drive to put my OS files on.

any more suggestions?