High speed hard disk - Raptor or RAID0 - where does it pay off?

[LVGLTD]

If I install a high speed hard drive, where will it do the most good ?
- operating system
- programs
- documents

I find that I run out of disk space for OS + programs after a year or so, so I'm typically installing a drive for each one of these.

[Kevin]

If I install a high speed hard drive, where will it do the most good ?
- operating system
- programs
- documents

I find that I run out of disk space for OS + programs after a year or so, so I'm typically installing a drive for each one of these.
In the world of the typical PC it is the OS and programs that will get the most benifit out of faster storage. If "documents" just referrs to word processor documents then I doubt you would get any benefit there. However if you are going to be processing large data files of some kind (like video) then that is where you want your fast storage.

I normally suggest against using RAID0 except in some unusual situations. For every disk you add to a RAID0 you are just increasing your chances of disk failure and data loss. The only place that I personally use a RAID0 is on my backup server since it is only storing a backup copy anyways. If you use a RAID0 to hold real data then you better have really good backups.

The really high performance (and redundant) disk configuration is RAID 10 (0+1 is almost as good and more supported). Unfortunately it costs more because you have to 2x more disks for the same capacity.

BTW, we have tried out some Raptor drives and they do work very well.