HDD question for you gamers

My project is going through a new revision and I now have room for 3 laptop hdds or a single desktop hdd. Would you prefer three 500 gb 2.5" hdd or a single 1.5 tb 3.5" hdd.

PS: asking here because no other laptop can handle 3 hdd besides the 9262.

Edit: forgot to mention my system has a built in raid controller so the 3 hdd would be in raid.

 

3 in raid would be just about perfect IMO.

 

If money is no problem, the RAID option seems safer, at least, for one part of the data, although 3 hard drives might be hotter.

 

Good point about them running hotter. There will actually be two 60mm fans blowing across the hdd area, so I'm hoping there shouldn't be any temperature problems. I know some desktop hdd's have a rpm switching design so they can spin down to run cooler when performance isn't needed. Does anyone know if this is available in laptop hdd?

 

I never heard about that kind of feature...
But I realized: 3HDD x 2.5'' = 7.5'' of HDD / 1HDD x 3.5'' = 3.5''...How come you can fit three 2.5'' but only one 3.5''? Or is that a personnal choice? But even if you have rpm switching feature, I believe Vista won't let you use it

 

On my D901C when I raid0 three 250 GB 5400 RPM drives it (noticeably) outperforms a desktop high end 7200 RPM 750GB drive over Esata.
So I would say the RAID wins, at least if you have more than 2 laptop drives...
You will want a backup desktop drive to go with a 3 drive RAID0 though.

I can't link you the benchmark pics while I'm at work but in HDTach the RAID setup averaged ~107 MB/s and the desktop drive averaged ~92 MB/s.

However if your desktop drive was a raptor it would win probably.

To livesoft: I have no idea what the TC is planning on doing, but 3 laptop drives take up about the same volume (probably slightly less) than a desktop drive. I would watch out though about stacking 7200 RPM laptop drives that close to each other. You should get a fan and have some airflow between the drives.

 

I'd suggest one SSD to run games off of and 2 HDD's in some RAID configuration (your call on redundancy/striping) for storage/media/non-HDD intensive applications. That seems to be the setup for a lot of high-end desktops from what I know. Obviously, if the SSD is not an option for your config, then three 2.5" HDD's in RAID.

 

I just don't have enough room for two 3.5" hdd, but with the 2.5" hdd I can stack two of them and then put the 3rd one next to them.

Livesoft, this is the hdd I was talking about that lowers the rpm. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136150

 

HDD does not really affect gaming performance.... only load times.

So you can use RAID-0 for better load times, but it wont make any games perform better.

A good way to find performance for overall usage, is to make the pagefile work on a different HDD then the main one.

 

Well, if you can keep everything cool, the RAID would be better, in performance (as mentionned above) and security (at least, for a part of the data).

 

I would go with the 3x2,5" HD's aswell, safer looking datawise and faster (atleast in raid) than a single 3,5".. Ofc the power usage and heat development will raise a little with 3 disks instead of one, but shouldn't be by a huge margien

 

It's more to do with the height I would guess. A standard notebook HDD is 9.5mm high, a desktop one is 26, so you can fit almost 3 laptop HDD's into the same space as a desktop hdd, and it'll still be much smaller in the other 2 dimensions.

I personally think you should use the space for 2x300GB VelociRaptors. (2.5", but 15mm tall)

 

Is this feasable? Pardon my ignorance, I've only had my computer for about a week now.

 

a: this thread is ancient.

b: we were talking about a custom build unit, and not the NP9262.

c: Removing the cooling assembly from a WD VelociRaptor invalidates the warranty, and isn't even possible on the gen2 ones.

 

Wow, bad first impression on my part, huh?

Well thanks for the info.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude/harsh, just to point out the facts