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What would you prefer for a SOHO computer(primarily video editing/3d work, with occasional FPS gaming)? a single 15K 36GB U160 drive, or two 10K 18GB U160 drives (in some type of RAID)? Why?

I always like to have a spare HD in my computer for backup, multiple OS etc. Also it can be good for organization. Work stuff + important apps on one drive, games, downloads, crazy crap on the other. Better to have 2 IMHO

Well, I have plenty of computers in my space, so each of them only needs one. I just back up over the net. But two would be nice for organization.

The only advantage of a second drive would be if it was on a separate IDE channel. Then simultanous read/writes can occur, which May speed up disk heavy applications; especially swap drive performance.

Better to spend your $ on more memory and a faster HD than to purchase a second one.

Um, the U160 drives that he is listing are SCSI not IDE. Which can do read and write task at the same time. One advantage SCSI has over SCSI.

In my experaince going with 3 drive and RAID 5 is you best overall choice. Unless you run RAID 0 with 2 drives. However if one fails the data will get hosed on both drives.

My suggestion would be:
Get a slightly smaller 15K U160 drive where you put everything you need FAST(OS/Swapfile/Games/etc.).
For the money you save, get a(large) fast IDE drive that you can put everything else on AND if you still have some money left, add some more RAM; I for one REALLY liked moving up from 128 to 256MB, now my HDD actually goes into suspend mode while I´m playing most games, just marvelous.

Sounds like a good point Direwolf. I do have an 18gb 10k u160 drive in my machine right now, and a 30gb ide drive as well. Unfortunately the scsi drive was bought used last year, and it is about 4-5 years old, and it's starting to make loud noises upon spinup and clicks often. I want to replace it before it totally dies on me! But would I get much of a performance increase from going from a 18GB 10k to a 18GB 15k? Probably the drive i have in here now is a first generation 10K, and the seagates I'm looking at are 2nd or 3rd generation 15K! Any drive I buy will have to last at least 2-3 years at the most. In terms of RAM, i'm pretty content with the 512 I have in there now.. The only thing that seems to be the bottleneck is the main hard drive! I can hear it seeking and moving its heads almost all the time when I transfer files, etc. And the IDE drive is so much quieter compared!

But would I get much of a performance increase from going from a 18GB 10k to a 18GB 15k?

Yes.