I'm thrilled with the amount of helpful responses to my last post (First Time PC Builder ...), and I'm floating a little bit off topic from that original question, so I figured I'd start a new thread. Here's the deal. I: can afford to buy two 7200RPM drives and configure in RAID 0; can't afford two small Raptor 10,00RPM drives for RAID 0, and could afford a small Raptor, but also need to store other applications on the new PC. If I had a Raptor, could (or should) I get a larger 7200RPM drive to store the other data and apps on? I'm sure I'm oversimplifying, but if I placed only FSX on the Raptor, and everything else on a 7200RPM drive, with no RAID configuration, would that: 1. work, and; 2. get me faster loading for FSX.Aside from knowing if it's even a workable solution, I'm wondering if FSX would, by default, store some data on the slower drive that would negate the speed of the Raptor?Finally, if this just doesn't make any sense at all, and I went with a RAID 0 config for two 7200RPM drives, what are people doing to back up their data to mitigate the risk that if you lose one drive, everything is gone?Thanks for all your feedback. Avsim forums are the place to learn.Kevin

RAID vs. Non-RAIDMy recommendation (experience based, no less!):Purchase a (XXX)GB 7200 RPM and use that as your boot and programs drive, storing pretty much everything you want on there. Use a size that is both affordable and spacious enough for you to work with. I am running on a 250 GB drive. SATA/300 recommended. Purchase a 70GB 10,000 RPM drive, and use that as your FSX (and other games) drive! (36 GB seems too small for me, and the 100+ raptors seem far too expensive)Through personal experience, I have found that 7200 RPM drives in a RAID-0 arrangement, while faster than a stand-alone 7200 RPM drive, is actually slower than a stand alone 10,000 RPM drive when it comes to FSX. RAID-0 has it's place with applications and programs that manipulate large files, but RAID-0 loses it's edge with small files. RAID0 can load in files faster, but it takes RAID-0 longer to GET to those files. Because FSX is a huge collection of little files, physically getting to them is more important than loading them. Due to FSX and FS2004's small file size size, RAID0 and non-RAID drives will load them into memory equally fast. In addition, by giving FSX it's own physical hard drive you give the sim the benefit of it's own read/write head. Your windows installation will use the 7200, and the sim will use the 10,000. If Windows needs to write to the page file or do other access, it is completely independant of the sim's drive, keeping the hardware access separate and efficient. If you do an awful lot of multimedia manipulation (DVD or video authoring), you may find the benefits of RAID-0 to be up your alley - but if you are strongly concentrating on FSX, you will be quite happy with a single Raptor for the game, While I did not benchmark the speed difference, I did indeed notice a load time and flight-load time improvement when using a 10,000 RPM drive with FSX/FS2004 as opposed to a 7200 RPM-based RAID-0 array. Actual in-game FPS and performance was reasonably unchanged, as the hard drive system has little to no bearing on the FPS. Yes, FSX will store some files on the 7200 drive (the fsx.cfg file, and other little bits like that), but they are completely insignificant with regards to load speed. 99.999999999% of the important stuff that needs time to load will be on the 10,000 RPM. :)Backup Plan (RAID or not!)Even though I don't have a RAID array anymore, I still use the same backup plan:I have an external USB drive (100GB?), and I use a software tool called "ViceVersa" to copy all my critical folders to it. "My Documents", my desktop, my email, my download directory, and my archive of downloaded files and programs - they all get automatically mirrored to the backup drive every time I turn on the computer. Only the changed files are copied.If I ever lose a drive, all my important files are backed up. Yes, I still have to reinstall windows and all my applications, including the simulator, but after backing up all the data, the only thing I would be risking is "time" to install my PC again.Insure you have all the sensitive data in your plan - documents, digital pictures, "master" download files like the PSS installers and Flight1 wrappers, and all other things you don't have cut to disc or DVD. I also include a folder with current drivers and patches for the system in the event I lose it.

I think your reasoning is pretty good on this. For me, I started questioning RAID when I started playing around with Vista, as getting RAID drivers that would allow vista to see the array was a problem. That may be worked out by the time vista hits the street, but in the process I went through many threads which had driver problems. recently my system broke (turned out to be power supply) but I wsa faced with the problem of possibly moving the array to other hardware. I'm not sure how hard this is, but I don't think it is a easy as just plugging a single drive into different mother board. I don't want the only option to be to reformat/reload all my software if I have to move a drive or drive array.scott s..