Zxian

I was about to suggest Meedio, but they apparently got bought up by Yahoo, and are now selling a commercial product.

Hehe... I stand corrected.

What problems have you had with copying over the LAN? I've sometimes had problems with the files simply not being copied, but using right-click-drag and "TeraCopy Here" seems to solve the problem.

@Vegetto - RAID0 isn't true RAID. It's striping the data on the disks for purely performance reasons. You said that you wanted the Raptor for the performance boost. Setting up two drives in RAID0 will give you better overall system performance than a single raptor. You'll get a little hit with seek times, but usually that makes up for itself with the higher transfer speeds. You wanted to know the pros and cons of RAID. See this page. It gives you pretty much all the basic information about RAID that you need for now. Did you see the graph I showed you? That's' two 320GB drives vs two raptors. A single raptor will give you worse performance than that - plain and simple. Long story short - RAID0 gives a noticeable performance gain over a single drive. Yes, you lose the data on both drives if one dies, but you shouldn't store vital data on the RAID0 array. That's why you would use a RAID1 or higher arrangement for your 500GB storage drives. If you want to see a case example of someone who's setup massive storage and performance in the past few months, look no further. The two key points - 1.5TB of redundant storage in on a 3ware controller, and a quad-core system that takes about 20 seconds to boot up. The former wouldn't be possible without RAID5, and the latter wouldn't be possible without RAID0. Once you go RAID, you never go back.

Thanks for the notice - IP's blurred. I gotta remember to do that... And yea... you win by a small factor, but you need three monitors. My wallpaper's prettier anyways. So there!

Mouse for me. I just picked up the Logitech MX3200 Wireless desktop - great setup.

The problem with doing that is that encoders change, and they'd actually have to "listen" to the song to identify it. Probably something that's pretty tricky to do.

So.... an insanely sized desktop to go along with an insane system. Two 20" Acer monitors - 3360x1050px.

The Big Boy fan is actually impressive. I've got it on low speed, and it still draws out a considerable amount of air. The 900 has TONS of airflow. The downside - dust and lack of any noise blocking. My fans are slow enough that the noise doesn't bother me anyways. Regarding your boot times - disable any device controllers you're not using. I've disabled the JMicron controller on my P5B board, since I don't have any PATA devices or the SATA or eSATA. That shaves off about 2-3 seconds from the boot time. About the video card - if you don't game - any dedicated graphics card will do the trick. Heck - even a 7100GS will be fine for a plain work computer.

Well - performance is more or less the same. I doubt that you'd really notice a difference. In terms of what's the best value, 2xWD3200AAKS is far better than a single Raptor.

Let me put it to you this way - Two WD3200AAKS drives at NewEgg works out to $150. A single 74GB Raptor at NewEgg is $160. We just said that two Raptors are about the same as two WD3200AAKS drives - but you'd end up paying twice as much. He'd be paying more for a setup that works half as well.

I'll give you a parts list of the system I just put together for myself: Case - Antec 900 CPU - Intel Q6600 Mobo - ASUS P5B Deluxe (non wifi) RAM - 2x1GB OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 Hard drive - 2x WD Caviar SE16 320GB (RAID0) Graphics card - eVGA 8600GT 256MB "Superclocked" DVD Burner - Pioneer DVR-212D PSU - Corsair HX520 The Q6600 might be a bit overkill for you, but honestly - the system flies. It takes that system about 20 seconds from pressing the power button to being at a fully working desktop. Most of that comes from the hard drive performance, but if you take that setup I've got, and toss in an E6450 or the like - you'll have a system that will keep you plenty happy for the next few years.

@vegetto - you're asking a question that I don't think anyone can answer. Nobody knows how the 7200.11 drives will perform yet, since there aren't any benchmarks out. As for your system drive - forget about the raptor. Get yourself two 250GB or 320GB drives and run them in RAID0. You'll get much better overall performance, and it'll cost about the same price as a single Raptor. If you don't believe me - check out this. It's two HDTach results overlaid. The one result is my two WD3200AAKS drives, and the other is jcarle's two 74GB Raptors. As you can see - my performance wins on everything except for random access times. Remember - that's TWO Raptors in that graph, and you're considering getting only one.

My suggestion - get yourself a better case. The Elite330 isn't a bad case, per se - it's just that you're putting some relatively high-quality components in there, and the Elite just isn't up to snuff. I ran into the same kind of problem trying to get my Ultra-120 on my board into the RC330 - it just didn't fit. I ended up getting the Antec 900. A bit more expensive, but plenty of room to work with, and overall a nice layout. It's not the most ultra-silent case, but I've only got my hard drives and 3x120mm fans in there, and it's barely noticeable.

Bold was a strange guy. He really didn't like you if you didn't agree with his methods. Why do you want to find his site again? He had slightly unorthodox methods about "cleaning" his system, and I think nuhi put him out of business, so to speak.

@gamehead - you're comparing a bad drive with a really bad drive, so the bad drive will win. Pick up a new KS or AAKS series drive and you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you're looking for a good source for quiet hard drives, look no further than the list of SPCR's Recommended Hard Drives. Like memnoch and I have said before in other threads, Samsung's may be great in terms of noise levels and such, but they're too new on the market to recommend as a long-term storage solution.

@vegettoxp - Let me list off all the hard drives I've bought in the past two months: 2x WD2500KS 2x WD3200AAKS 4x WD5000AAKS Need I say more? Seriously though - the WD5000AAKS drives perform well, keep cool, and are very quiet - even during seeks. This is coming from a silence freak...

Well sure - it all has to do with the RAID controller. The question that comes up is when does the overhead of the controller outweigh the performance increase from the added drive. @iceangel89 - Those two drives that I showed you might cost a bit more than a single raptor, but the overlal performance is MUCH higher. You'll never see a single Raptor get 300MB/s burst and 120MB/s sustained transfers. RAID0 should never be where you store critical data. For me - all of my "save data" goes on my file server (which has nothing but redundant storage), while the system drive goes on the RAID array. If one of the drives dies, I've always got a system backup done every other day, so restoring the system is easy. One other thing - people shouldn't confuse RAID0 with "true" RAID. Remember, the R stands for "redundant", which RAID0 has none of. If you're wondering about the best performance for the least cost - two 250GB or 320GB drives in RAID0 will outdo a single Raptor any day.

Again... I'll go for WDS. It's the same basic engine that's found in Vista, with a little bit of a wrapper to make it fit in with XP.

You won't see me touch another AMD system until they're at least on-par with Intel. Did you guys see this? Intel Shows off 8-core 45nm Penryn Benchmarks The 3.00GHz Penryn beats out what insiders claim two Barcelona cores can do. A single 3.33GHz quad-core Penryn gets nearly 13K in Cinebench, while two quad-core Barcelona chips are supposedly pumping out ~16K. Anyone see a problem with AMD?

@ripken - the Perpendicular storage technology was initially invented by Hitachi. There's a good Flash video called "Get Perpendicular" that they released - very funny, very non-Japanese. Another great feature that WD has with their new 1TB drives that are due out soon - IntelliPower. In regular words, it'll vary the rotational speed of the drive as needed to reduce power consumption when idle, and allow for full performance when needed. @vegettoxp - Here's the product page for the Raptor non-X. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.as...amp;language=en All you gotta do is search... I just put "Raptor" in the search box at WD's homepage and got the link.

Yes - everything you've listed will work just fine. You simply don't have any need for that kind of overclocking with your requirements. Get that setup, and two 250GB or larger SATA hard drives and set them up in RAID0 for your system drive. If you need more proof, compare these: Single WD 250GB drive Two WD 320GB drives in RAID0 The speeds speak for themselves.

I get those kinds of speeds on my WD2500KS drive. That's on a non-perpendicular, low-density platter drive. Nothing really to write home about...

Meh - once the thread is up - it's up. One note about getting AV protection - I don't recommend what I do (i.e. no anti-virus) for the "common" user. The "common" computer user is dumb and will make mistakes. Making mistakes isn't the problem, but when they don't know how to fix it - that's when we run into troubles.

Just a note - Seagate drives are NOT quiet. They started to get worse with the 7200.9 series, and the 7200.10 are just horrible. Ask anyone over at the SilentPCReview.com forums about the quietest drives. They'll say Samsung first, then WD, and Seagate somewhere down at the bottom. The big problem is their seeks noise, which in some cases is on par with Raptors. I just don't trust Samsung drives yet - they might be great initially, but they don't have enough time on the market to prove their reliability yet. Oh - another thing - don't get the Raptor X. Just get the plain Raptor. You don't spend hours looking at your hard drive, so what's the point in a window?