5400rpm VS 7200 rpm

I would go with a 7,200rpm. I could see someone wanting a 5,400rpm in a lightwieght business notebook, becuase of the better battery life. Your laptop is a desktop replacement. RAID is overrated.

Too another thing to consider is that the Hitachi 7200 RPM Drives are designed to run 24/7 at least thats what I read about them. You will see a difference for sure in access times. But one thing you should remember too is that the 7700m supports SATA so you could stick with the 5400 for now then upgrade to some decent SATA'a later when they become avail. and save the money now etc... As far as RAID? I would say hte Gains from RAID 0 are minimul at best (even though I still went with it) but RAID one is great for security purposes.

It has been debated before and,

Spindle speed outweighs your RAID 0 setup.


When in doubt always go for the faster spindle speed. It has little to no effect on battery consumption. And for general useage and gaming I'm willing to bet 1 HDD @ 7200 will outperform 2 HDDs in RAID 0 @ 5400 rpm. And two at 7200 is even nicer. You won't regret the faster drives.

Employ some delayed satisfaction and you'll end up happier in the long run. (and you might save yourself some money after you realize you wanted the others)

Yes, you can literally see the difference between 5400 and 7200 if you compare both configurations side by side; plus I've had difficulties with 5400s actually freezing while in the middle of large d/ls or installation. So if you d/l and game to a high degree (and move stuff around a lot), definitely go with the 7200. 5400 goes like a crawl when transferring between drives and whatnot.

To say there is little gain from raid 0 is not true at all. stripping across two drives "nearly" cuts the time in half to write the data. 2 raid 0 5400's will smoke 1 7200 rpm drive as long as the total size is close to the same and all are in equal health and fragment status. my experiance with 2 7200 rpm drives in a raid 0 and my single 10000 rpm raptor is the raid is faster. you can see it when loading screens and anyother task that doesnt fall back on the cdroms or any other slower device. But its like water cooling unless you need it you may not miss it. but once you use it you have trouble going back.

Instead of explaining it, I'll just quote it. . .


http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...hdd/perf/raid/

How easy it is to answer this question depends on who you are and what you are trying to do. The only way to answer the question is to fully explore the issue, weigh the costs against the benefits, compare the costs to your budget and decide what your priorities are. Do this honestly and the question will answer itself.

That said, I won't cop out completely. Here are some very broad guidelines:

* Business Servers: In this author's opinion, all but the smallest businesses should be running their critical data on some sort of RAID system. Data is so important, and interruptions can be so crippling to most businesses, that the costs are usually worth it. Even an inexpensive, small RAID setup is better than nothing, and if budget is very tight, not all of the company's data has to reside on the array.

* Workstations: For those individuals who are doing intensive work such as video file editing, graphical design, CAD/CAM, and the like should consider a RAID array. RAID 0 will provide the improved performance needed in many of these applications. (RAID 10 is superior due to its redundancy, but the requirement for four drives makes it expensive and space-consuming; if the RAID 0 array is backed up each night then that's usually quite acceptable for a workstation.)

* Regular PCs: Most "regular PC users" do not need RAID, and the extra cost of one or more additional hard drives is usually not justified. Most individuals who set up RAID on regular PCs cannot afford hardware RAID and SCSI drives, so they use software RAID or inexpensive IDE/ATA RAID controllers. They are typically setting up RAID solely for performance reasons, and choose RAID 0. Unfortunately, RAID 0 just doesn't improve performance all that much for the way typical PCs are used; I often see gamers setting up RAID 0 systems when most games will take little advantage of it. Meanwhile, the RAID 0 array puts all of the user's data in jeopardy.


As Game33 said
So unless he's editing video (moving large files around) he'll see no real world benefit to RAID 0

Great article, and very true. The other thing to consider is that on IDE arrays they are actually slower than a traditional single write operation. The controller needs to place checkpoints for the data and that takes extra time. Not to mention nothing is more dangerous than striped data.

Raid is not any more dangerous then non raid in my opinion if you have cheap hardrives or hardrive the chance of it failing is greater then if you have high quality hardrives. a single say maxtor hardrive is more likely to fail then say 2 hitatchis in a raid 0. like i said before the only people who dont seem to like raid are those who dont use it once you have it you never go back. just be sure to use high quality drives becuase in theory you are 2 times more likely to have a drive fail. I have been in the computer buisness a long time and id have to say hardrive failure is like being hit by lightning your chances are low. but some have been hit twice.

I think the 7200 rpm drive will be the good descison for you Game33 like others have said

but remember for some reason laptop style hardrives always seem a bit slower then their desktop counterparts. in a lappy a 7200 will suffice but 2 in a raid 0 fly WHOOOOOSH lol

Here is an article I was shown by another member of this forum. Even still I am running RAID 0 on my 7700, even if it is a minimul gain it's still a gain... and if it's like you say double the speed great... either way I will find out when I get it. I would be curious to rate my 3Dmark 05 scores with those running non raid systems and see for sure.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101