Talik:
I currently only have (2) Cheetah 15K 36Gb units (Model # ST336452LC) running in RAID 0 on an LSI Express 500 w/ 128Mb cache card. I am currently waiting for another one to pop-up on ebay for around $150 so I can go RAID 5. The drives are very nice and also very quiet!
As for overall speed, it depends on what settings I used in the SCSI BIOS. If I turn off read ahead optimizations, it jumps to around 70MBs but the system seems more sluggish. Turn the read ahead on and the overall system speeds up but my transfers dip to around 46MBs. One of these days I will optimize the whole setup for maximum performance.
Joe: if you have any suggestions on settings I can try to get these drives to kick it up a knotch, let me know