seagate baracudda vs velociraptor

hmm..actually I am planning to add a secondary disk, which is the velociraptor.. install vista there... and frequently used data/application in the raptor and still use the baraccudda for video, music, and documents storage...

That a common setup, and will work well.  But it has nothing to do with a raid.

If you can afford the higher price per GB for the Raptor I'd say go for it.  You could get a second 1TB Baracudda for the same price as a 74GB Raptor.  Yes the Raptor will be faster, but is you're motherboard and CPU new enough to keep up with the drive?  If you have a 3 year old MB perhaps you really won't get the full benifit of the Raptor.  Check to see if your motherboard supports RAID 0.  If so buy another identical Baracudda and set up RAID 0.  

The Raptor 74GB has a though put of only 1.5 GB/s, but the Raptor 300GB has the full 3.0GB/s for a wopping $230.00.  

Hmm..my system is an xps420 with a Q6700 overclocked to 3.33 GHz, so I think it could handle the raptor really well... so do you mean instead of buying the raptor I should get another 1TB of baracudda and set up raid 0? The thing is I am a type of user who doesn't really use all of those space... I already have a 1 TB external disk, which mainly I like to store my music, video there.. even as of now.. my 1TB internal disk, the baracudda isn't even 20% used yet... so I am looking towards the speed/performance over the capacity.. I am pretty sure I've got enough space to handle my needs

The RAID 0 would give you total of 1 gig with 2 baracudda's so you wouldn't gain anything in size, but you would in SPEED.  But setting up RAID and be tricky and you MB has to support it with out buying another SATA Controller card.  

This article goes against my thinking.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/190424-32-raid-raptor

Check these specs out:
http://www.poromenos.org/node/78

Ingore my last post.  It was for RAID 5.  

not really sure if my MB supports raid though.. so lets assume it's not then I would just use SATA for both the raptor and baracudda, I am sure it will still give me some performance boost than what I currently have now

Best setup in your situation (with price in mind, especially if you're not sure about RAID):

VelociRapter as your system disk, and your other drive / baracudda as your storage drive.

I have an old Rapter (the one with the see through top) and it is still pretty fast compared to other non-performance hard drives. Quicker boot times, quicker load times, it's great. I also have 2x1.5TB drives sitting there for storage (downloads, photos, home movies etc) Although i didn't RAID (especially not in RAID0).

For a single drive performance solution get the VRaptor and get a nice big 1.5TB (best value for money GB/$ at the moment?) for your data, you can't go wrong.

Another thing worth a mention is SSDs (Solid State Hard Drives), especially if you have more money than sense. But for most of us these things are just attractions for afar due to their prohibitive costs, they'll probably become more affordable for general home users in the next 2 years or so (hopefully less!)

PCBONEZ I'm with you on the interface speed, it's so irritating when people mention it as if it's the actual transfer speed of the hard drive.

I guess my MB doesn't support RAID, so I will need to set up both in SATA

I made the point because
Barracuda - 7,200 RPM
Raptor - 10,000 RPM