First build, looking for help

Junior8325 · June 6, 2017

Last year I built my first PC.

Asus Z170-A MB

16GB DDR4 3000 RAM

1TB SSD for my OS

In a Corsair 760T case

After watching video after video on building a PC, pulled the trigger and built my own.

I had this crazy idea I'd attach some HDD's into a RAID back in the day and I set it to RAID in the UEFI before installing Windows 10. With the case having 2.5 drive caddy's - would I be out of my mind to think two Seagate Barracuda ST2000LM015 in RAID 0 would work?

I have no idea what to look for in product details to see if this can do RAID(if there are any limitations for HDD and/or using "laptop" drives, I dunno) My initial thoughts were some WD20EZRZ WD Blues, I saw the 2TB drives are set at 5400 RPM and saw the Barracudas are the same - why I thought it might be do-able.

Currently have the 3.5 drive bays out of the case, to show off the room with that acrylic window and all.

My plan is that this is going to tide me over until I build a NAS - probably by the end of the year.

Thanks

Techli0n · June 6, 2017

Get 7200 RPM Drives if you go HDD. They will be much faster, As for RAID, I'm no expert but it SHOULD work as long as you aren't using shady drives.

seagate_surfer · June 6, 2017

Keeping the OS on your SSD is going to give you the best performance for boot/load times. You can RAID BarraCuda drives, but you're still not going to see the performance the SSD can achieve. Laptop drives are not going to be the best option if what you're looking for here is pushing performance, as their priority is reduced power consumption.

If you're looking to increase performance of a traditional HDD without having to spring for the cost difference of another SSD, one option you may want to look into is a SSHD, these hybrid drives combine an SSD cache with a performance spinning disk component for some of the benefit of SSD while still having the larger, price-friendlier storage capacity you see in traditional spinning drives. Some users prefer this method, others prefer having an SSD for their OS and important performance files/applications with a traditional large-capacity HDD for all their other storage needs.