SATA RAID

[G22 0]

I have 1 74GB 10k WD Raptor SATA and 3 x 300GB Seagate SATA HD's.

 

What would be the best RAID setup for these drives? Perhaps scrap the 74GB and go with a RAID-5 with the 3 x 300GB drives? Get another 74GB and run RAID-0 with those 2 drives and another RAID-0 with the remaining 2 or 3? Or would you even bother with RAID? I am not too concerned with redundancy however.

 

Also, how reliable is hardware RAID with XP in general? I have always used RAID-5 on RedHat Linux with SCSI drives and never Windows. The only time the RAID ever failed on Linux was when using a U160 card with U320 drives and setting the speed too high in the SCSI BIOS. I also intentionally pulled a drive from RAID-5 just to see if it rebuilt and used the 4th hot-spare drive. Other than that, I have never experienced a RAID failure using Linux knock on wood.

 

Thx.

[Thomas 0]

Depends on what the drives will be for? Video storage? OS? MP3s? Pr0n? Over all I've found the raid support in XP to be alright. NFTS isn't as fault tolerant as ext3 but the major issue for any raid is hardware. SATA drives won't be as roubst as SCSI but they should last you a few years. Get a good raid card and you should be good.

[G22 0]

It is for a PC Based DVR. Either the 74GB just for the OS and programs as it is now with the other just for storage, OR the 3 300GB for everything in RAID-5 perhaps.

 

The ASUS MB I have does RAID 0, 1, 5, and 0+1. Or is an add-on RAID card preferred? I thought the PCI bus should be as free as possible when using a DVR card?

 

Thx.

[keefe007 0]

Remember that if you are only using 3 drives in your raid array if one dies, your array is busted. You need at least 4 drives to have a fully redundant and scalable solution.

[scottj 0]

or use Matrix RAID.

 

scottj