RAID0 - 500GB?

[mystery42]

I was thinking of building a PC with 4 500GB hard drives. And haveing a 2TB drive as a backup my question is, would it be better to use 4 500GB drives or just get 2 1TB drives. I'm worried because i read that RAID0 is limited by the smallest drive on the array and if i want to upgrade i don't want to have to swap out all my drives just to get more space. I figured if i use 1TB drives now when i want to upgrade i just need to buy one more TB drive instead of buying like 2 more 500GB drives. Also the case i'm getting only has 5 HD slots so that also poses an issue cuz if i upgrade in the future i need a bigger backup. Main question is would i get better performance with 2 1TBs or 4 500GBs. The TB drive has 32MB cache and the 500GB has 16MB cache. And how risky does it get when you have a big array i've never gone above a 2 HD RAID 0.

 

[sub mesa]

Since 1TB disks have much better Gigabyte-per-dollar ratio than 500GB drives; i fail to see why you would want 4x500GB instead. Even 1TB disks don't have the best price-capacity ratio; that is reserved for the 1.5TB disks at the moment; the 2.0TB have worse ratio again.

 

[mystery42]

I'm thnking more in terms of performance not so much in space. I don't think i could fill 2TB up but with the games comeing out i wouldn't be suprised, I filled up my current 500GB RAID in a month. I just need to know what would give me more performance and how risky it would be. I did notice as you say that buying 2 1TB drives give me much more space for my buck big time i might add. But if the performance isn't as good then for me its not worth it.