Rhard drive recomendation for gaming/web design/media server

[chedderslam1976]

I am trying to decide on the best raid configuration of drives for my new build I am considering.

I do not think the velociraptors are worth the money, so I will probably be going with the WD 640gb drives, which I often see recommended here for OS/programs. I am also looking at the Spinpoint f1 terabyte drives for data.

So I can go this route:

4x WD 640's in raid 10, which would provide both performance and redundancy.

OR

2x WD 640's in raid 0 for OS.programs (performance)
2x Spinpoint f1 terabyte in raid 1 (data safety)

Also, do I need the RAID edition f1s? They are almost twice as much as the standard ones. Should I wait for the f2's to come out? When will they be released?

 

[tecmo34]

Have you looked at using two SSD's as the OS drive in RAID0? It will give you the best performance & setup 2x WD 640GB Black in RAID1 for backup. Or do you need that much storage space?

 

[chedderslam1976]

SSD's are a bit expensive right now, and I concerned about long term usage problems.

 

[kufan64]

1) Dedicate a single, stand-alone drive for your OS. (There's really no reason to backup this drive or anything on it.)
2) Dedicate a single, stand-alone drive for your backup drive.
3) Buy as many more drives as you want, and set them up either in RAID 0 (no redundancy) or RAID 5 (single drive redundancy).

Be aware that RAID in general is seen as a "last line of defense" when it comes to protecting data, and really shouldn't be solely depended on to protect you from data loss.

There are free software programs that you can schedule backups with. I recommend DriveImage XML, but there are many choices.

Personally, I would have an OS drive, a backup drive, and RAID 0 for data drives. If you are more paranoid than I, RAID 5 is also a good choice and should give you plenty of peace of mind. Be aware though that you need at least 3 drives in the RAID for RAID 5, which would mean a total of 5 drives in all)

Regardless of what you end up deciding, I highly recommend putting your OS on it's own drive so in the event you have to reinstall your OS (or it just stops working one day ), your data will remain unmolested.


...One final suggestion... Flash drives. Not a great choice if you're backing up everything on your drives, but if you only need to protect a few GB worth of files, flash drives are a fantastic, cheap backup choice, then you won't even need a dedicated backup drive.