Need help picking the best hard drive

[Plubyblop]

I'm currently building a server for an online game my brother and I are creating.  It's been pretty straightforward figuring out what would work best for most of the parts, but I'm somewhat lost on the hard drive; there are more options than I thought there were, and the hard drive is a pretty important part for a server, so I want to get the most bang for my buck.

Anyways, the most important thing I'm looking for is speed. Capacity is almost a non-issue, as each player should take no more than 5kb each.

I've looked at several hard drives, so far the one that has stuck out the most is the SeaGate Savvio 15k drive:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/produc ... avvio_15k/

It looks like it's one of the fastest drives around, trading capacity for speed.
(only 36-73gb, but I can live with that), and they go for around $300.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get two of these and set them up in a RAID 0 configuration, but that's approaching $600, and I'm not exactly sure how much more efficient RAID is, would it be worth doubling the price tag? Or might it actually be better to buy 4-5 7200 RPM hard drives and set those up RAID 0; it would come down to about the same price.

I've also been hearing about the advantages of non-mechanical hard drives quite a bit, but from what I understand is the flash ones will deterioate the more you write to the drive (which is problematic, as we'll be writing fairly frequently), and I can't find any information on RAM based hard drives.  I'm thinking these probably aren't the way to go, at least not until they're more mainstream, but I thought I'd bring it up.

Basically I'm looking for the fastest set-up I can get at around $600 (though less would be nice)

 

[___]

The keyword you're looking for in flash drives is "solid state" however they're extremely expensive compared to standard hard drives.

 

[Plubyblop]

Looking into those again, apparently they don't lose they're writing capability as fast as I had originally heard.  From what I hear every "module" can be rewritten around 2,000,000 times before they're dead.  I don't have any idea how long that would last in a server system though.  The RAM based hard drives might work for what I want, but I can't find much info on those, and I can't find a single actual product either; I've searched on both Newegg and Ebay.  Either way, these both might be a little out of my price range.

I've been thinking about maybe buying one Savvio 15k.  It would only cost me around $300, and would leave the possibility of RAIDing it open.  I'm still not sure if it would be better to go for more slower drives and RAID those though. 

 

[___]

RAID can be a real pain in the ass. Unless you can afford a solid 0+1 array it's not worth the risk imo; when you're doing RAID 0 you're doubling your risk of data loss and ensuring that any small problem will completely destroy all the data on both drives. So yeah stick with the 15k drive unless you can buy 4+ slower drives and do 0+1.

 

[skirtboy]

The 15k drives are fast, but if you use a 10k Velociraptor, you'll get a huge increase in capacity for the same price, and the slightly slower rotation speed is compensated for by the highly efficient design, which means you's be giving up little speed.