New hard drives, do I RAID0 them?

Spedley Guest

Hi, I have a friend who bought a Dell computer some time ago. It only has a 40Gb hard drive which is almost full and the time has come to buy a new one.

He requires a minimum of around 80Gb (+ his existing 40Gb for mp3 stroage) and as he mainly uses FS2004 I'm wondering what the best option is.

    Here are my thoughts, what do you think?

  1. 1x37Gb Raptor for XP and 1x37Gb raptor for FS2004
  2. 2*37Gb Raptors in RAID 0 for Windows and FS2004
  3. 1x74Gb Raptor for Windows and FS2004
  4. 1x200Gb 7200rpm drive for Xp and FS2004

I'm particularly interested in the difference in performance between having FS2004 installed on it's own drive rather than on a RAID 0 with Windows.

As you can see I have an £80 (US$150) budget and the original 40Gb 7200 rpm drive to play with. We also intend on updating to FSX when it's released.

2.66Ghz Celeron - may change this
40Gb IDE 7200rpm 8Mb
onboard SATA [raid]
9800pro - will change this if FSX requires it

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Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

With a limited budget I'd go for #4, FSX (and Vista) will be huge installations and with add-ons you will need space.

It would be nice to have 2 h/d. one for Windows so you can reinstall anytime you want and the other for FSX but 37gig is too small for FSX.

Your going to get some good arguments for the others, let us know what you do.

Radar

Pro Member Chief Captain
Greekman72 Chief Captain

RadarMan wrote:

With a limited budget I'd go for #4, FSX (and Vista) will be huge installations and with add-ons you will need space.

It would be nice to have 2 h/d. one for Windows so you can reinstall anytime you want and the other for FSX but 37gig is too small for FSX.

Your going to get some good arguments for the others, let us know what you do.

Radar

Not for me.I agree 👍

Guest

With option 4 I could use the
40Gb hard drive for Windows (-20Gb mp3's) and the
200Gb drive for FS2004/FSX ... or would a 74Gb raptor be enough (or two 37Gb's in RAID0)

Choices, choices ... 😕

Pro Member Chief Captain
RadarMan Chief Captain

A 40 and a 200 would be perfect.
Windows and your anti virus on the 40 (C) and everthing that doesn't take automatic updates on the other.
74 may seem big now but in 2 years you'll be unhappy.

Radar

Pro Member First Officer
KenTel First Officer

I'm just a bit curious, you say the Dell was bought some time ago, in which case, will the Motherboard accept SATA drives? Lots of other queries, but that's the main one.

Guest

He bought a Dell Dimension 3000 which was a poor choice, however I was unable to help him at the time.

It came with:
Intel Celeron D 330 (2.66GHz) Processor
512MB PC3200 DDR Memory
80GB 7,200rpm Hard Drive - I thought it was 40, perhaps I've underestimated Microsofts hunger for bytes?
AC'97 Audio with Dell A215 Stereo Speakers
Intel Extreme 2 Integrated Graphics with 64MB Shared Memory

I tried to fit a graphics card (9800pro) only to find that the motherboard did not have an AGP slot so I also had to replace the motherboard (with a
Jetway PM9MSR2). Also, it now has an extra 512Mb.

It now does a reasonable effort with FS2004 getting a minimum of 10fps at 1280x1024 (native LCD resolution) but sometimes has a really annoying pause every few seconds.

Pro Member Trainee
Spedley Trainee

It's me again. I've never used a phpBB forum before without being logged in. Sorry for the post above, I tried to edit the message before last but didn't realise that option wasn't available for guests Embarassed

Pro Member First Officer
KenTel First Officer

I've found the spec for this Mobo at

http://www.surpluscomputers.com/store/Main.aspx?p=ItemDetail&item=MBB10521

Seems it will run SATA and RAID if required, but not being an Intel user, at a guess the actual overall conclusion is it's not really up to the job.

But maybe someone here with experience of Intel, may be able to give a better answer.

Sorry I can't advise any better, but hope someone else can.

BashDaBish Guest

Performance = Raid
Capacity = 200gb

Your system specs will see some benefit in using raid but the difference would be negligable. If you are planning on upgrading the memory and possibly CPU then go for the raid option now. If not then go for the 200gb IDE drive.

Hope it helps.

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