ATM I have 2 7200RPM 320GB (IIRC) HDDs running in RAID 0 (striped) for performance.

I've been considering getting Windows 7 as I'm currently on Vista. But would want to do it on a clean drive and a full install.

If I was to get a fast 600GB current HDD would it beat the performance of my current setup?

I have an Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus mobo and I'm not sure what that can take in terms of HDD interfaces.


Or even a smaller HDD for the OS and a few games (i.e. 100GB)

When I rebuilt my rig back in October I got myself a Crucial M225 SSD hard drive just for Win7 install and general programs leaving my bigger hard drives for my music & films etc.

Its only a 64Gb drive but ample for Win7 etc and it flies - boot-up from cold in around 20secs.

Have a look at the Samsung F3 review here http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storag ... b-review/9

For Vista boot times and Crysis loads its on par with a velociraptor. And if I remember Jurassic Park that was one nasty [LIFTED] dinosaur!

In all seriousness though you probably wont get anything quicker for the money - the next step being SSD and SATA 3 (is that out yet??)

I suspect not, the RAID 0 disks will deliver approx 2 X the IOPS of the single drive.

I have two Seagate 7200.12 500Gb single platter disks, in Raid 0 for OS and two 1TB Samsung F1's in Raid 1 for data storage (mirrored of course in raid 1). Very very fast, but one of them on its own was quicker than my old 2x250GB spinpoints in Raid 0.

Have the Raid 1 running off the motherboard and the Raid 0 running off an Adaptec card. The PC is pretty old though.

lol. My P4 system with an ancient 40gb hdd boots Vista in 30 xD

I doubt that's so that it's fully useable, without any stuttering, or slowdown. Probably boots up to the desktop in that time, mine's about the same.

Ok, 40 secs to be able to open ie xD But yh, Ive got practically nothing on startup xD

Same here, same results! My fiancee's PC is only office tasks, so a 2nd bigger HDD isn't needed. Everything opens and closes in a blink