Which Hard Drive Configuration on a new Computer

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I'm planning to buy new computer, but suddenly I found myself confusing regarding hard drives. I want a FAST AND SECURE way to store my data, but at the same time cost effective. This is going to be my workstation/development machine and I am asking this because I always had bottleneck problems with hard drives.

First I was thinking to construct RAID 1+0 or 0+1, but later I found out that RAID 5 can be more cost effective because it only needs 3 drives instead 4, but i don't know about performance gain/hit.

I was also thinking to buy a 60GB SSD hard drive and use it only for Windows installation. All other programs, etc., I would install on another disk and then I also would have a third drive to save static data like downloads, movies, installation files, ISOs, etc.

I am really confused which option to use here, or is there even some better configurations that I am not aware of? Any suggestions?

Best Answer

I like the SSD + large hard drive idea the best: fast OS operation + large storage. For cost savings, you may consider the 10k RPM WD Velociraptor instead of the SSD. For backup, I would use a drive external to the system, either a USB drive or a NAS.

RAID is more trouble than it's worth for this. It's a solution for servers to prevent downtime; typical desktops don't need that. Even mirroring doesn't provide the same advantages that a true backup would.

To address the SSD vs VelociRaptor issues:

Intel X25-M 80GB SATA II SSD, USD 310 (Intel was Anand's recommendation)

Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10k RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s, USD 180

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The Intel SSD is almost 2.5 times faster than the VelociRaptor in this particular test. It's also over 3 times more expensive in cost/GB. You'll just have to pick what's more important to you.

For large storage, Ars Technica recommends

Western Digital Caviar 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s, USD 95.

Notes:

  • More charts at Anandtech, The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
  • Futuremark's PCMark whitepaper
  • Prices are from http://www.newegg.com and only valid at time of writing
  • It's been shown that the SSD advantage is not quite as significant in large sequential writes, but (1) some benchmarks still show them coming out ahead in this area and (2) it does not represent the majority of usage.
  • For now, only Windows 7 (and Solaris?) claim they optimize for SSD's. Future benchmarks may show even greater performance. On the other hand it's a young technology and we're not sure what impact wear-leveling will have on long term performance or reliability.
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