Raid 0 or SSD?

[scarab123321]

I don't really care about boot times, I already have windows loaded on 1 2TB HDD, and also probably about 1 TB of steam games on that same drive. The thing is, lately i've noticed that its my hard drive that is affecting my performance, especially when something is downloading in the background. The actual time to boot isnt slow, but the time when i can actually open any programs has significantly increased, and im gonna guess its because my HDD is 60%+ full now. Also i've noticed that when downloading something, it takes several seconds to open even google chrome at the same time. So my question is. should i get another 2TB HDD and set it in onboard RAID 0, or offload some programs to an SSD? My other specs are an i5-3570K, 8GB 1600 speed RAM, gtx 660 ti, and a biostar tz77b motherboard.

 

[USAFRet]

Buy an SSD. 128GB or larger.
Install Windows and most applications on it.
Install games on the other drive.
Enjoy.

You can cause Steam to use the other drive (or drives) as install locations.

 

[scarab123321]

if i reinstalled windows, what would happen to all my data on my other hard drive?

 

[USAFRet]

if i reinstalled windows, what would happen to all my data on my other hard drive?

Your data would still be there. But you'd need to reinstall all your applications on the SSD as well.

For your Steam games, you don't have to download them all again. See the procedures here for moving your Steam games:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

 

[scarab123321]

so id have to reinstall all applications?

 

[USAFRet]

so id have to reinstall all applications?

Yes. The new Windows installation would not know about them. Registry, AppData, etc....all new