Updating the 'puter for hardcore ownage

[--Pete]

Hi,

I found a few things in your post mildly amusing, but then I'm easily amused.;) First was the juxtaposition of:

. . . I will probably looking at a new system around the end of the year when my system is three years old.

and

. . . Almost all the Seagate drives have a five year warrantly where the WD's tended to be three years . . .

If you get rid of three year old systems, then what does a five year warranty buy you? And have you ever actually had a HD fail specifically in the 4th or 5th year? Just wondering, since to me the warranty, like customer support, and installation instructions, are non-issues when it comes to HDs. I'm much more interested in the numbers, including the price. Of the dozens of HDs I've bought over the years, the only one that had to be replaced was a Seagate. Do I give them points for good, rapid customer support? Or deduct points because that support was necessary in the first place -- I don't know the customer support quality of Maxtor, IBM, WD, and a few I've probably forgotten because I've never needed it.

I would also look for boards that have raid drive ability built in. Last September I got some simple 965G Intel chipset board for work so for the cost of one more hard drive I got backup all the time.

Sports car vs. dump truck. A game system is all about speed, a business system is about reliability. When I decided to go SATA RAID on my last pair of game systems, I went RAID-0 to get the throughput increase. If either of those systems end up in our business, I'll redo that system as RAID-1 for the reliability. However, I do agree that RAID capability on the motherboard is a plus to look for, although with the availability of cheap (<$100US for 500gB) external hard drives, backup, especially for a game machine, is not a major consideration IMO.

--Pete