Is there REALLY that much of a Difference?

Currently I have 2 of these 250gb WD2500KS WD sata II Drives

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701

I want to do a raid0.

How much difference is there bewtween a raid0 for those and a raid0 in these raptors?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822136054


I want fast performance. I work from home, so I am constantly on my computer, accessing files, browsing net, etc...I also play the latest games. Any help would be appreciated.

I was thinking about selling both of my 250gbs on ebay for about $50-55 each and then just coughing up another $100 for the raptors. Would this be wise, or should I stick with the 2x 250's ?

aside from access times i doubt youd notice any real difference. ie the system may have a bit more "snap" to it, certainly a measurable ammount. but will you notice???

You want to best performance, get the Raptors. Performance difference over your current drives will mainly be the seek times as previously noted while multi-tasking and is too subjective from person to person to tell you "yeah, it's worth it". You can always try them out and sell then easily if you aren't impressed with them.

the seagate perpendicular drives are the only ones to get if you dont go raptor.

I already have the 250gb SATAs

Would it be cost-efficient to basically get $110 from the 2x 250gb satas, then add another $100 and get 2 x 36 raptors for raid-0?

Also, what EXACTLY does seek time do?

Would it be cost-efficient to basically get $110 from the 2x 250gb satas, then add another $100 and get 2 x 36 raptors for raid-0?

Click to expand...

Not really. Bleeding edge performance isn't cheap.

Also, what EXACTLY does seek time do?

Click to expand...

The seek time is the amount of time required for the read/write heads to move between tracks across the hard drive's platter(s). The quicker the seek time, the quicker it gets from one piece of data to another that isn't in sequential order on the drive. So running two applications at once that access different parts of the platter, will be quicker with a drive with a lower seek time. The Raptors have a typical 4-6 millisecond advantage, mostly because of the 10K rotational speed of the platter, so they get to the data faster.

Seek times are more important for heavy multitasking or especially multi-user environments. A big part of the reason why SCSI dominates the server arena. Raptors are great for desktop use as well, the more disk-intensive multitasking you do the more you'll notice it. If your desktop multitasking is more 'load a few programs and use them' it will have less, but still noticable, impact.

Im running 2x sata 80Gs striped. Its somewhat faster, but not like MAN thats fast. Raptor would be better I think, but man they're gawd awefully expensive for the price per MB.