Ok, nub that I am, IDE or SATA and why ?

Does a mobo support one or the other or both ?

Im thinking of buying a Maxtor Diamond MAx plus 10, 7200 rpm 8mb SATA (200gb).

no point asking me, im only here for the atmosphere

SATA, the interface is faster and so are the drives, potentially anyway.

And I persoanlyl don't like maxtor disks, I always buy either Seagate or Western Digital.

i went for 2 x 80gig SATA maxtor barricuda's for my operating system, also have them Raided (striped)

work great tbh

i have a 160gb IDE for downloads, data storage etc

the new Asus A8v board supports all 3, IDE, SATA & Raid

raid has never been so easy, just plug both HD's in the raid connectors on the mobo.

work great

i would go for SATA at least if your mobo supports them, IDE dying out

if you have the cash go for the new sata 10,000 rpm HD's for your operating system, get 2 and raid them also

Jobbie...wtf are you on about man.

Raided ? so back to the question then, SATA or RAID then ?

The maxtor is a good drive, though the new Seagate Barracuda has had some good reviews, might be getting one myself soon. If you care about noise the Samsung drivers are the quietest and have decent performance, though noise wise the new Seagate is ment to be good but I've not used one yet.

As for mobo support, all modern boards will support both but check your motherboard specs. If you arnt sure just post the mobel of your mobo here. Its worth getting SATA if you can but you arnt going to miss out too much if you board doesnt support them.

Raid is overrated, wouldnt bother speaking from experience. If you dont mind the noice the 10k driver are fast without doubt but raiding doesnt do much for them.

nowt wrong with raid,

i raided 2 x 80 gb barricuda's and they work great tbh, now have 1 big 160gb HD for my operating system and games

raid is better than standard SATA, am i wrong?

Noise will be a big factor thanks for that Jim, not got the mobo as of yet im just in the middle of getting my new rig together bit by bit.

This ok ?

I'm running a 74gig Raptor 1000k Sata as my boot drive and it's very very fast. Noise isn't a problem and i even have the side off. Thoughly recommend the raptors.

Jobbie, barracuda's are Seagate drives not Maxtor ;-)

Iit's what I use exclusively in my pc's anyway, they are quiet and fast but do get a bit warm at times.

Try this one Felon

I like the idea of having a 160gb and a say 40gb for windows and any other appz.

Are them barracuda's quiet ?

Yes they are a bit more quiet than most drives.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with raid Jobbie, however its not worth the expense due to it making almost no performance difference. Raid is best left to servers.

I have a barracuda and its quiet but you can hear seek noises when accessing the drive. I also have a Samsung and its nearly in-audiable all the time. However I have a shuttle and if you are getting a normal case then any noise will be less apparent anyway. If noise is important then I'd highly recommend the Samsung but I have heard good things about the new Seagate but can't give any personal experiences of that one.

At the end of the day you wont have problems with any of the drives mentioned. I dont want to confuse things further but the following link offers a few performances facts. click

I have a RAID-0 setup myself, 2x120gb Segate Barracuda, 7200.7's i think.

While I'd agree that performance increase is not that great, you also don't lose that much HD space when using striping, it's a trade off like anything else. A little bit more speed against a little bit less hd space.

It does of cource cost a bit more than using a single larger disk.

7200.7 or 7200.8 is that the cache size .7 or .8 ?

7200 is splindle speed, the .7 or .8 is the model number

all this talk is making my powerful welsh mind go into overdrive !

Right I have now decided and about to order.

This and This

Or would i be better with just this

m8, just get a shuttle and a single large disk.