tricky storage question

[TheAnimousVox]

So I've been wondering what would be better for my gaming pc. For hard drives i would prefer WD. If I have a 500gb Black for my os and most programs would i be able to store all of my steam games on 2 4tb Reds in raid0? I've heard reds are better for raid and im willing to spend about $300 on storage. And I really do need the 4tb for the reds. Lots of games.
Thanks for your time.

 

[PEJUman]

your 500 GB Black OS & 2 x 4TB reds for storage setup would work fine. I am not sure you can get them for 300 though.

I think Reds are rated for 24/7 operation. Red/Black/Velo are all RAID friendly.
For OS I would recommend SSD as the poster above. if you're dead set on HD, velo would be a distant second after SSD. For OS, quick random access is more important than sequential transfers.

Green have some issue with RAID due it's power saving settings (park/sleep and how it responds to certain SATA commands). But I have very good luck with RAID 0 on 4 Greens. and they are about as fast as reds on sequential transfers (i.e. loading games).

 

[TheAnimousVox]

I dont really know too much about ssd's and how long they last. whats their life expectancy at? I dont want to get something I need to replace every other year. And ive heard Velos fail a lot so im not too interested in that tbh.

 

[PEJUman]

some early SSD got a bad rep, but they are very reliable now. I personally run 10+ SSDs, failed 1 over the past 3 years. modern SSDs are well above HHD reliability. some good SSDs: samsung 830, 840, Crucial M500, anything from intel.

I also have 4 velos, 2 x 300GB and 2 x 500 GB. my first 1 just died, after 6 years of abuse. I use it as a landing disks with RAID 0 (i.e. almost cont'd write everyday). Velos are enterprise rated drive, they are very reliable. the velo that died gave me plenty of smart warning, enough for me to backup all the data from it before it actually died.

On the other hand, I have 5 greens that each have 5 years of warranty, so far 4 have died under warranty. on my first red right now, WD gave me the red as the replacement for the 4th green.

 

[TheAnimousVox]

Alright! Thank you for your help PEJUman! I think I will go with a SSD for os and programs and 2 Reds for games! Thanks for the help

 

[popatim]

BTW
- Velociraptors have been discontinued. :-(

- Blacks are not recommended for raids. Only Reds, RE's, and SE's are, though blues and blacks usually work well in small raids.