Hard drive confusions

[TheLoneKnight]

Deciding on an upgrade for my current:

WD5000AAKS-22TMA0

Was thinking about getting a 76 gig raptor but after looking at some of the threads it seems that most people think it's more worthwhile to get a few of:

Seagate 250GB 16M SATA-2 7200RPM ST3250410AS

and just raid 0 them together.

I was just wondering whether one one point, my Asus P5K motherboard supported the intel matrix raid and what differences would be on a single raptor and a bunch or the seagate's raided together.

[tuskenraider]

The P5K does not have an Intel RAID controller, but does have a JMicron RAID controller that doesn't do Matrix RAID. The fact is the Raptor is still the quickest drive out there. It costs much more for what is becoming a smaller and smaller advantage over the 7200rpm drives as time as goes on. So if you're on a budget, or don't want to pay a premium for the Raptor, get the AAKS. RAID does not help any drive(s) match the Raptor's quick access times, only slows access times down. RAID(0 more specifically) is also not something you just do on a whim as it increases data loss risks.