Quote Originally Posted by 'Blorton',index.php?page=Thread&postID=30918#post3 0918
Honestly, I would recommend against going Raid0 on a gaming system. Yes, the benchmarks are all very sexy, etc. but those things leave out what a system like that is to live with. Even with an excellent hardware-based card like a 3ware, there are certain things that are a drawback for non-server use.
Totally agree. I've have a 3ware 9500S-LP4 and I've done Raid0, Raid10, and Raid5 with this card. Using Raid10 with four 250GB drives is slightly slower than using a 750GB drive connected to the motherboard. If you want fast drives I suggest spending money on 10k RPM drives instead. The advantage to Raid10 or Raid1 of course is that when a drive fails you're not immediately dead, but that does not mean that you should not be doing external backups anyway because your RAID card can fry all your drives (I've seen this happen).

My new machine will have 10k RPM drives, which I will probably NOT connect to the 3ware controller, coupled with external backup. Newer 3ware controllers may be faster than the 9500S, but I don't plan on buying another.