New Hard Drive for Gaming Question

Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.00GHz (1333FSB)
XFX ATI HD 5870 1024 GDDR5
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 DHX PC2-6400C4DHX
150GB Western Digital 10000RPM 16MB Cache Raptor X
200GB SATA 150 Maxtor 8MB Cache Hard Drive
Asus Maximus Formula Intel X38 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2
Coolermaster Real Power 700w Modular


Hi all, I use the raptor drive as my OS and main games drive, with the 200gb as misc games and music etc. I have recently got a lot of games that consume a lot of space so may need to look for another hard drive, which i've been advised the 1TB caviar black is a good choice for games. Just for the people who maybe have better experience with this than i have, what setup would you use, what hard drive out of these:

150GB Raptor
1TB cavair black
200gb maxtor

Would you

a. Install the OS on?
b. Use for installing/running games
c. Use for other bits n bobs

any advice or help is much appreciated. Also if anybody recommends a better hard drive other than the 1TB caviar black feel free to suggest!

Thanks,

Chris

 

Thanks David, yeah it seems the Caviar black is going to be the option, it's just what drives to use for the OS/games etc i need to decide on! I'm only looking for a cheapish upgrade to an alright working system, just the new batman, battlefield etc at nearly 30GB each game quickly removes you of free space!

 

Think I'm gonna get the 1TB caviar black and do the same, keep it all separate, thanks for the advice David!

 

Coming in a bit late - you noted in your opening post that your priority is clearly about gaming performance. With that in mind, I recommend you reconsider SSDs. They are the way to go and far outshine and out perform the best hard drives. There are many 256Gb SATA III SSDs for under $200.

If stuck on hard drives, the 1Tb Caviar Black, with its 64Mb buffer is a really nice drive, but again, if gaming performance is the objective, I would at least get a hybrid drive, which uses SSD as the buffer instead of RAM.