Should i plan on 2 hard drives?

[APcivic01]

Im gonna be building a new computer in a couple weeks and im considering my options for hard drives. I'm going to buy a 320gb 7,200rpm to give me plenty of space, but i was thinking about also getting a 36 gb 15,000 rpm hard drive to install windows, and maybe norton, on. With the faster HD will windows, and therefore my computer, start up faster? I turn my computer on and off often and i hate slow startup times.

[Foosa]

look into western digital raptors. They are 10,000rpms with 16mb of cache. The 15,000rpms are scsi(i think most of them) and i dont know of many motherboards that use that.

The raptors come in 74gb and 150gb and cost about 170-329.

[blue60007]

Yeah, SCSI drives cost a bucketload (and you need to fiddle around with SCSI controllers (which I don't think are cheap either) and getting those to work, cause any desktop mobo won't support it). If you want top notch get a 74GB (the 16MB cache) Raptor like Foosa suggested. Also, while not silent, I have to assume the Raptors are much quieter than a 15000 rpm drive!

[APcivic01]

well the 320gb HD im looking at right now is a Western Digital Caviar 7,200rpm 16 mb cache. would their 10,000rpm product really make any difference on start up? thats the real question i have. whether having windows and norton on a HD that is 2,800 rpm faster is really worth the money or not.

[glc]

Only you can make that decision. Personally, I think you will notice more of a speed difference if you do not install Norton - it's a pretty bloated package these days and there are better alternatives, some of which are free.

[Staren]

glc beat me to it. I was going to give the same advice. Dropping Norton like a bad habit could very well give you as much of a boost in start-up then going from one of the latest 16mb cache drives to a 10,000 rpm drive. Switch to NOD32 or one of the free AVs.

[RuM]

Most bang for your buck speed wise would be to purchase 2 Western Digital 74GB Raptors and set them up in RAID 0. Many wouldn't recommend this due to the fact if one fails, they both fail leaving you with a major headache.

A safer consideration was your first: using the smaller GB capacity Raptor and a larger, 7,200 RPM drive for data storage. Install ALL of your applications (including your OS) on the Raptor, and store your images, music, etc. on the other hard drive.

Make sure you purchase a board that supports the SATA interface. Most do, but better safe than sorry.

With all drives, I stick by Western Digital which still supports Legacy power to their SATA interface hard drive and a stellar RMA process.

I stick with a single 74GB Raptor, because that's all the storage I need. The performance is amazing. If you don't really use more than the 74GB, just stick with a single hard drive. No reason to fill up say 16GB on your 37GB Raptor, and only 20GB on your seperate hard drive. That'd be foolish :-).

15,000 RPM drives are only available for the SCSI interface as of now. Yes they are appealing but their prices are rediculous.