Using a Raid specific drive in a desktop, not in a Raid configuration.

[Matt_Smi]

I have my eye on this drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144424 it is a Raid-specific drive meant for use in servers but would there be any problem using it in a regular desktop system? It has some features that I would not take advantage of but other than that I think it would be fine. I guess I could just get this drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144423 but for $20 more the Raid drive offers a 5 year warranty.

[Cricket]

You could take a look at the Seagate hard drives, they all have 5 year warranties.

Cricket

[jayb1234]

From this review, it looks to me like you can use the RE2 in a desktop without any big problems.

[glc]

I don't recommend the RE drives for standard desktops - they run hot and are noisy. Use them for server RAID duty that are on 24/7. As Cricket said, get a Seagate (or a Raptor) if you want a 5 year warranty desktop drive.

[Matt_Smi]

Originally Posted by glc I don't recommend the RE drives for standard desktops - they run hot and are noisy. Use them for server RAID duty that are on 24/7. As Cricket said, get a Seagate (or a Raptor) if you want a 5 year warranty desktop drive.

Thanks for the info, I didn’t know they were noisy drives, but it makes sense, why would they bother making them run quiet when they are designed for servers. I want a quiet drive, I have already been though two different Raptors and RMA’d them both because of how loud they were, so that’s ruled out. I want a drive with a 16 MB cache and right now Seagate only has one out, which is a 500 GB model and costs $370, so that rules Seagate out too. I think I am going to go with an SE16 series drive from WD, either the WD2500KS (250 GB) or WD4000KD (400 GB). Maximum PC recently reviewed the WD4000KD and they said it broke all there performance records, beating even the Raptor in there real world performance benchmark. I have a feeling the WD4000KD will perform better than the WD2500KS because it has denser platters. The SE16 series is also supposed to run very quiet and cool making them more ideal for a desktop system.

[WolfPac_Ite]

http://www.storagereview.com/php/cms...ontent&id=1010


So, in the end, both these devices are physically and electronically the same piece of hardware. They come off of the same assembly line and are subsequently treated separately via the differing burn-in times and factory TLER settings. This is borne out by SR's own perfomance testing of the SE16.