Fast hard drive needed

[SL]

What are the fastest type of hard drive for a desk top. I currently have SCSI drives (15,000 speed) but the bottle neck is I/O.

I need to read / write large data files. (databases in excess of 100m rows)

 

[Igorian]

What is the spec. of the rest of the machine?

 

[SL]

2 * Zeon 2.6ghz (may be 2.3) , 4gb ram, XP pro, 3 * SCSI.

I may get a new PC, but not sure what to ask for.

Thanks

 

[Deluks]

Do you have any of the drives setup as a RAID?

 

[SL]

I was thinking of changing to RAID 5, but I have been told I would lose disc space, as I could only RAID 2 of them (1*36gb 2*136gb) and I do not have any free slots to add another drive. I was also told it may not speed even speed up the I/O.

 

[Igorian]

Well, you would need at least 3 disks for RAID5, but it should give improved performance. Upgrading the disks/controllers to 360s would help, but that would depend on your budget.

 

[SL]

I have decided to get a new PC, must be Dell with XP pro 32bit.

It will only be used for database and email so must have fast hard drives due to very large files and must be better than my existing PC. My current issue is with the I/O

I friend has suggested,
4*GB ram DDR2 800 mhz,
core 2 duo E6800
4 * 150gb rapter SATA Hard Drives
Max cost £5k but would prefer to send less

Any other recommendations as I do not understand the finer details e.g. SCSI V SATA drives

Thanks

 

[Deluks]

Save the dosh, your existing setup is perfectly adequate for your needs, all you need to do is add a hardware RAID card, and an array of fast 10,000rpm or above drives. I don't know the performance diff between SATA II and SCSI but I'm pretty sure there's not much in it these days. SataII may even have the edge. Faster RPM doesn't guarantee better performance, access times and other factors are involved.

I wouldn't have thought database and email usage should mean very large file sizes?