Hard drive performance advice needed.

[PitViper]

The past three systems that I built were RAID0 systems. For my soon-to-be-built system, I’ve decided to go non-RAID.

I recently purchased 74GB WD Raptor, planning to load it with the operating system and newer games. I was planning use a second 7,200 rpm hard drive for the less intensive stuff, e.g., older games, Word, Excel, mp3’s, etc.

I just purchased a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint 7,200 rpm drive for the second drive. It has a better throughput than the Raptor but a slower access time. (No wonder the older Raptor's price droped so much. My bad for buying one.) Benchmark summary near bottom of page here. (http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/western_digital_velociraptor)

What would be the option for the best performance, mainly for newer games?
1) Continue as planned. Load Windows and newer games on the Raptor and everything else on the Spinpoint.
2) Load only Windows on the Raptor and all other stuff on the Spinpoint.
3) Don’t even bother with the Raptor.

I do not plan to spend any more money for a newer Velociraptor because I’ve still got other components to purchase.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[Jeffbx]

Option 1 will give you fastest system performance, but put the swap file on the second HD. Then Windows can access system files & swap memory at the same time.

[PitViper]

Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try.