Re: Hard Drive Question
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I just built a machine and have 2 10k drives in RAID 0
it flies - no more lag on FTP or other sites that were lagging, HUD stats pop up immediately, etc. I think it's worth it especially if you have big databases.
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And don't care about your data...
I wouldn't recommend RAID 0 for general usage. And believe me, if FTP was lagging, it wasn't due to hard drive throughput.
The general idea behind 10k drives is to reduce latency, which can make windows slightly faster when you are opening programs for the first time or otherwise loading large data from the hard drive. While it is minor, there is a definite speed advantage here. I don't know what the cost difference is, but if it is minor you might as well spring for the 10k. If the difference is large, I would just go with the standard 7.2k drives.
RAID is a whole different can of worms. It is a way to combine multiple hard drives together to form 1 simulated hard drive with some sort of advantage. RAID 0 gives you a disk throughput advantage (although not latency), but doubles the risk of data loss. RAID 1 gives you double protection of your data but throws away 1/2 your available disk space.
I would just stick to normal 7.2k drives without RAID. It is going to complicate your life pretty much needlessly. If you want to increase performance on something like a database, pay attention to the amount of cache on each hard drive (or get more RAM for your system).
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