Graphics Card

[USC]

yeah..thats true! I could do a Raid 0, partition it and do manual back up.

[gman]

Easier to go for 3 drives and use RAID 3 or 4...Dedicated parity and with drives so cheap easy to do..As long as its not a laptop..

Or do an external backup of important files every week etc....

[delemonte]

If it's your HDD that's letting you down, then test it to see what actual transfer speeds you're getting... If you're getting less than ~65MB/s, then just buy a new HDD and install your OS onto it, and use your old HDD as a data or main backup drive where performance isn't critical. A new HDD (with the exception being cheap or 'energy efficient' drives) should be able to transfer general data from 95MB/s up to 115MB/s, depending on the drive.

They do seem to slow down after a few years of use. Depending on the cause of this deterioration in speed, you can sometimes 'speed it up' again using various methods.

If you really want ongoing performance, RAID all the way.

As far as SSDs go, I'm really not a fan yet. Absolutely fantastic concept, but the limitations of today's existing SSD technology turn me off straight away. I've no doubt that I'll get one eventually, but I reckon that'll be when they've gone down in price and have become more practical for continuous use e.g. caching/buffering, recording video onto, logging data.

[dieselhead]

Yeah, I got the Vapor-X. It might take 3 months until the 5850 becomes available at decent prices and even longer before something like 5850 Vapor-X hits MSY's shelf.

I'm going for 2 X 1TB Samsung F3 HDD in RAID 0 for now. SSD is not mature enough yet, learned that on my own money when bought a G.Skill 64GB with JMicron controller... Besides, there's a trend towards PCI-e SSDs at the moment that will solve the limitations of the SATA bus and would allow you to reach close to 1 GB/s read and write. Well, not yet, these are just as immature as the 2.5" SATA versions. Giveém 12-18 months and they'll be OK. For now, 2 to 4 fast and quiet Samsungs will do the job nicely for less than $90/TB

[USC]

Both 5850 and 5870 are already at CPL. It shouldnt take too long before they reach MSY.

I have two fairly new Seagate SATA II hds in my desktop. I have another larger wireless HD for storage & Backups but that shouldnt slow down things as it is not part of my system. I will try raid 0..the problem is I am too lazy to re-install windows.haha

[dieselhead]

I wouldn't be so sure about 5000 series availability. OK, the 5700 ones are, but supply of 5850 and 5870 will be scarce this side of Xmas I reckon. No biggie, the Vapor-X 4890 I just got will go in the HTPC to make room for the 5870 in 12 months or so