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Hard disks

Posted on 12 May 2008 at 11:24

In our silent system, low noise is most important. Hard disks can be a significant contributor to PC sound levels, particularly when seeking. Although Samsung's hard disks have a great reputation in this department as well, Western Digital has gone one better with its GreenPower range. These disks dynamically switch between 5,400 and 7,200rpm as necessary, which cuts power consumption to just 4W when idle, and acoustic output to only 25dBA. We chose the 750GB version for its balance between value and capacity.

You might also consider taking advantage of the RAID capabilities your motherboard box probably has emblazoned on its exterior. RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) can also boost performance by splitting up your data and writing it to multiple hard disks at once. The main way a motherboard-based hard disk controller chipset will do this is by striping two or more disks as a RAID0 array. But although the parallel writing sounds like it should double your hard disk performance, in reality it doesn't. We used our benchmarks to test our gaming PC with a single 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 hard disk and then two configured as RAID0. The performance difference was minimal. To get a decent boost from RAID, you really need to go to town with multiple disks.

Build a future-proof PC... for £200

Author: James Morris