Entirely Hypothetical Question...Which RAID set-up would you choose?

[Speederlander]

Ok, hypothetical choice assuming you have the cash and the motivation and any price difference between the two is secondary to performance. Any storage volume over 100 gig is plenty. Primary usage is gaming, followed by programming and CAD work. Interface for any controller cards must be PCI-X.

System 1:
4x WD Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM 16MB SATA 150s in RAID 0
1x Areca ARC-1110 PCI-X 64bit/133MHz SATA II Controller Card w/128 meg Cache

System2:
2x Fujitsu MAX3073RC 74GB 15,000 RPM 16MB SAS HDs in RAID 0
1x PCI-X SAS Controller Card w/128+ meg Cache (to be determined)

[BlueBiker]

All RAID 0 and none of it a more reliable setup for storage or backup? I'll assume you have some other backup facility available.

My choice would probably be the four Raptors, but arranged as a pair of 2-drive RAID 0 arrays. Then you can have one for OS and one for work/temp.

ARC-1110 looks like an excellent card. Probably want to get a battery module and/or run with UPS.

MAX3073RC and WD740ADFD are same size w/same MTBF, but the Fujitsu is way more expensive for the somewhat lower access times.

[One_Hertz]

first one hands down.

[nn_step]

System 1 in raid 10

[illmatik]

Def system 1. You'd never see the benefit of SAS as a single user, not to mention on 2 drives.