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N C I X has it for a very reasonable $98.62 Canadian, but it's on backorder. Looks like you can order it though and at least get a spot in line.

Fastest can mean a few different things when it comes to SSDs - sequential vs. random speeds, and reads vs. writes. But without getting into that, the fastest drives out right now are the SandForce based ones, i.e. the OCZ Vertex, Corsair Force, G.Skill Phoenix (and several others). They're...

That VR adaptor should be just fine, but you may not need it, depending what you're trying to do. If you just want to mount an SSD in a standard desktop case, you shouldn't need anything as complicated. Something cheaper like this should work fine (there are lots of similar ones out there). SSDs...

Can you give some links supporting that? Specifically the poor GC on SF and C300 drives, and the 30% lower steady state performance. I was under the impression (based largely on Anandtech's articles) that SF garbage collection was the best around (they were specifically recommended for OSX...

Yes, waiting for the better $/GB next-gens would be my recommendation. Given how you describe your usage, I doubt you'll notice that much of a difference in your day to day computing with the new drives, except perhaps large file copies and maybe loading times if you have any programs with a...

What sort of performance are you looking at? If you need raw sequential bandwidth, then the current SandForce drives or the Crucial drive mentioned above should be a pretty big improvement (particularly in write speeds). If random speeds are what you need, then the current SandForce drives...

The manufacturer's specs page will almost always give you physical dimensions. You could also consider getting a multiple monitor mount arm to suspend them over your desk, that way you're not actually limited to the size of your desk.

No, a Velociraptor (particularly the older ones like your 80GB) won't come near the 3Gb/s SATA limit, you'll be fine.

Read Anandtech's latest review of the C300 drives, or at least the conclusion. It's pretty recent, and he has a good explanation of the benefits and drawbacks of each, and the best usage cases.

As others have mentioned, a big part of it is personal preference, i.e. is the difference in quality noticeable to you and worth the additional cost? The other thing to keep in mind is how you're planning to play these back and on what setup. Most of the media streaming devices out there will...

It's likely to be pretty negligible, but I would say always go for the ethernet, given the choice. While you're unlikely to max out the speed of either, ethernet is much less likely to screw up your system. USB means more overhead (again, likely minimal, but why bother if you don't have to), and...

Breakout cables don't multiply the number of SATA ports available, they're for going from a multilane connector (such as an SAS connector) to a standard SATA. You can't turn 1 SATA port into 4 without extra hardware. The options for adding more ports to your system depend on how many you want...

I have to disagree with this. Wireless is definitely great, for some things and in some situations, but it will never surpass wired. The speed is one thing but more importantly wireless has to deal with all sorts of interference - wired is simply reliable where wireless isn't. Particularly if...

Cat 5e should do gigabit perfectly fine for gigabit. It's rated for 350MHz, which I'll let someone else who knows their stuff better elaborate on. I wouldn't sweat it too much, unless you're desperately in need of 10Gb over copper, which I'm guessing isn't the case. Two suggestions based on...

I've been using some 1TB Green drives (WD10EADS to be exact) in a RAID 5 (linux md) with the TLER fix, and they've been working flawlessly.

See if there's an available BIOS update for your motherboard. I had issues similar to this some time ago, and IIRC, the solution was updating my Sil3114 card bios, as well as the motherboard.

For anything with a backplane (hotswaps, Mac Pros, etc.), this is a good bet for mounting SSDs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994064&Tpk=icydock%20ssd Not sure it would be a great idea for VelociRaptors due to heat issues, but most of them come with proper sleds now...

If you read the article Engadget links to, you find out that these chips aren't ready for SSD usage yet. They're going to be used in USB flash drives and the like first, they're not quite ready for SSDs. Still, good news going forward, and sooner or later this should make some positive impacts...

It does suck that they haven't said they'll do it, but it's worth keeping in mind that they haven't said they won't do it, they just haven't said they will. Given (admittedly limited) past history with their SSDs, I would expect they'll put something out for the G1s too, they probably just...

Good point, overlooked that. I'd definitely be encrypting any tax or financial information before doing that however.

How much data are we talking? If it's just drivers and tax records, I'd be surprised if it's much more than 100 MB, in which case you're probably best off going with a brute force method - get a bunch of cheap storage and replicate it. If one method fails, you'll have a few others. Burn a bunch...

I don't see this happening, for three reasons. The first is that as discussed a page or two back, PCI-E by itself doesn't automatically a drive faster. It offers a bigger pipe, but the drive still needs the ability to pump enough data to fill that pipe. The PCI-E drives now can do this because...

Can you expand on what this setup is for? If there are some specific purposes, then there amy be a good answer, but if it's just general gaming and some browsing, videos, etc. then it doesn't make that much difference. I would be inclined to go with the 640GB as your OS drive with programs, etc...

OWC (http://www.macsales.com) is pretty popular in Mac circles for their FW800 drives. They're pricy (although less so if you buy one with a drive pre-installed), but very high quality, and I'm told good service. If you want maximum performance (i.e. FW800) they're probably worth it, but if...

Actually it can largely be attributed to the controller and the flash used. The fusion-io is way more than just a larger X25-E with a PCI-E interface. As we've seen with the Jmicron mess, as well as Intel's outstanding performance relative to the others, the controller makes a lot of...

WHS is definitely an option, but I'm not that knowledgeable about it, so I'll let others discuss it, except to say that since it sounds like the bulk of your PC usage is Mac-based, and you have some tech proficiency, some of the benefits of WHS (specifically the easy backups and turnkey...

That's certainly true, although I don't know enough about the internals of modern games to know how they load levels - I suspect that while there are definitely some pretty big texture files, for every one of those, there are probably dozens of smaller files for which the random access speed is...

I would have liked to see some discussion of access times and random reads/writes, particularly how they scale from 1 drive to 4. Those are the areas in which SSDs really make a difference - given enough spindles, HDDs can post pretty high sequential speeds, but for the majority of users (even...

This is largely hypothetical, but I had a thought and couldn't find an answer to it via googling. If you export a volume on a physical drive via iSCSI, if you yanked that drive and put it in another machine or external enclosure, would it be readable as any other standard hard drive? My iSCSI...

My most recent 2 drive shipment from NCIX was pretty well packed - a styrofoam frame in the middle of the box supported on the sides and top with the big air pocket packs and crushed craft paper to take up some volume. Maybe the thing to do isn't make the case to Newegg, but rather to drive...

Does anyone have any concrete info on how RAID0'd SSDs affect random read/write performance and IOPS? I seem to recall seeing some benchmarks that suggest it negatively affects both, but I may just be imagining things.

I think a few people here are overlooking a crucial element. Even with a card that can support 450MB/s total throughput (i.e. from the card/chip to the southbridge) and a drive that can output at that speed, you won't be able to hit it with a single SSD, not on 3Gbps SATA anyway. You could in...

Such things do exist, but they generally use nasty proprietary software (i.e. tends to be thrown together and not tested well), and far from the fastest option around. If both have gigabit ethernet, thats probably your best bet for simplicity and speed. Directly connecting the disk via SATA...

Yeah, prices have really dropped over the last week and a half or so in Canada. Lots of sales on, which usually are an indicator of where the "regular" prices will be in a few more weeks time. NCIX had this Hitachi for $79.99, and 1TB WD GP drives are going around $85-90 at a few places. Cheap...

Thanks for the opinions guys. Unfortunately I waffled and the deal expired on me, but if I'm lucky I'll have one at at decent price coming to me along with a 1TB GP soon enough.

I know asking for opinions on a hard drive or manufacturer is a good way to get a bunch of anecdotal horror stories, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm looking to get one or two new drives for my Linux mdadm based raid5. Ordinarily I'd just go with a WD drive since a dollar or two here or there...

I read in a few places a little while ago that the TLER utility caused the WD20EADS drives to read as 1TB. However that may have changed (but I imagine it would require an update to the TLER utility). A quick google seems to be fairly inconclusive, but a more thorough search might yield some...

True enough. I suppose the first question should be, what OS is the OP using for this system.

Raid 5 would generally be my choice for this application. You get some redundancy against drive failures, but without the cost of raid 1 or 10. The big caveat however is that if you're using your motherboard raid, then I'd be a little wary. Software raid 5 implemented by the OS is pretty...

Prior to upgrading to a more modern mobo, I used that or a very similar card. I think it's pretty much a reference design based off the Sil3114 chip. It's limited by the PCI bus and SATA 1.5Gbps, but otherwise pretty capable if you just want a dumb controller. For cheap archival purposes where...