2x5400 vs 1x7200rpm?

gmontem · Post by **gmontem** » Sat Apr 05, 2003 2:47 pm

In building a quiet PC for my dad, I've been debating to myself whether to get one 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda or two smaller-sized 5400rpm Seagate Barracuda's in a RAID configuration. The 5400rpm drives have been striped to help make up for the slower performance but I'm not sure if two of these drives will still be quieter than one 7200 rpm drive. Any thoughts in this?

SometimesWarrior · Post by **SometimesWarrior** » Sun Apr 06, 2003 1:39 am

Check out the Storage Review homepage, and scroll down to Feb. 4, "Is RAID 0 Really Worth It?" and take a read. In short, they say RAID 0 doesn't improve performance much, but it puts your data at risk because if either drive fails, all the data is inaccessible. I used to think that twice the drives meant twice the performance, but SR says differently, and I'm inclined to believe them. So using RAID 0 as a performance "equalizer" might not work well.

I don't know anything about the noise of 5400 vs. 7200 RPM drives, though.