Hi Folks,

Currently, I have a 74GB Raptor in my system. It's a great drive, very fast, super reliable (8-10 hours a day since 2004), but of course the one drawback is the size of the drive. I have gotten into the habit of copying my music collection to multiple CD's to keep a decent amount of free space on the drive. This does have advantages, since it is a backup and I can play the (mp3) CDs on a real stereo or in the car, but it gets old to have to dig up the right CD to hear one song.

I love the speed of the Raptor, and I understand that they have a 300GB version out now, but I don't really care for the price tag. It's about $300 and at today's rock bottom prices you can a 1TB 7200 rpm drive for under $200. That really blows me away....I remember paying $700 for a Western Digital 1.2GB EIDE drive (5400rpm I think) back in 1994! Heck, my first PC had an 80 _Megabyte_ MFM Seagate that cost around $400 in 1990. It also filled an entire 5 1/4" drive bay and weighed about 10 pounds, no joke!

Anyway, sorry for the ramblings... What I am looking for is 1TB of storage (want this to last me 4-5 years), but I would like the speed of the Raptor. I think that I will keep the Raptor for a Kubtunu drive, and then buy either a fast 1TB drive or RAID two 500GB. Might even do a RAID with two 750GB's depending on pricing.

Could you guys recommend which approach would be better, and also recommend some drives? I am partial to Western Digital, but hear that Seagate is the speed king and has a better warranty these days.

Thanks in advance....sorry for the long message.

Edit: The rest of the system is an Athlon 64 X2 4800+, 2GB DDR2-800, ATI 2400 pro 256mb.

Hey,
If I were you I would get 2 of these.....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136218

1.2TB for $180.00 + free shipping

The Western Digital Caviar Black, or the Samsung Spinpoint F1 should be the fastest TB options out there. Nothing will quite feel as fast as the raptor, mainly due to access times, but those drives will come fairly close.