HDD Question

[fordham1]

First time builder looking for proper HDD setup for new system. I do moderate gaming and applications and have a large music/photo collection. I was thinking of a 150G or possibly smaller Raptor for OS and gaming and two seagate 250G 7200.10 for in a raid setup for storage. Also since they are OEM and this is my first build how many / length cables do I need in a full tower case. Also any ideas on a HDD controller.

[glc]

The motherboard should come with enough drive cables, if not, just buy any SATA cables. The power supply should have SATA power connectors.

I'd keep it simple and forego RAID, just get one huge drive for your files. If you are looking for a backup solution, an external drive is safer. RAID 0 leaves your files vulnerable - if one drive craps you lose the whole array. If a RAID 1 craps, rebuilding can be very tricky. RAID 5 is worthwhile, but this requires 4 drives and is really intended for servers and requires an expensive controller card to do it right - integrated motherboard RAID 5 does not perform that well due to system resources being used to manage it.

You shouldn't need a controller, motherboards these days have multiple SATA ports.