need advice from the experts

[nownot]

I have a box with 3 x 1.5tb's running m$ server 2008 r2 with software raid 5, but i dont like software raid, i just dont trust it.

What do i use this for?
media streaming on a 1gb network, music, blu rays, etc .....

What am i wanting?
I want to have redundancy for drive failure, speed, ability to add more drives ( possibly not same drive, but if it must be then the same drive).


Question is what is the best options for me?
Thinking of getting external raid 5 controller, thinking of getting perc5i or perc6i, or just sticking with what i got b/c it's working and adding more drives.

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

 

[nownot]

any ideas / help?

 

[Nothinman]

Probably not until you grow up and stop using juvenile nicknames like M$...

 

[nownot]

sorry habit, Microsoft

 

[Nothinman]

The big question is why don't you trust software RAID 5? I'm no fan of Windows software RAID and I've her their RAID5 implementation performs pretty badly, but I'd take Linux software RAID over hardware any day. The flexibility and hardware independence win out every time, IMO.

If your current setup works, why spend money on new hardware unless you're that OCD about your hatred of software RAID? And you still have to take into consideration the time and effort to migrate to the new array. And those won't be small considering the amount of data that you have.

 

[FishAk]

How fast is your network to the server? If a single disk can fill the pipe, perhaps using single disks is the best choice. Buy one more disk, and configure one set of disks to back up to the other. It would be like RAID 1, without the the added failure point of RAID.

 

[nownot]

I have a 1Gb to the server, and as far as mirroring everything I have like 3tb's of data so doing a raid 1 for every drive is going to cost more and it (in my eyes) will be wasteful b/c of raid 5/6.

As far as software raid 5 I guess I'm just ignorant because it feels less stable, slower etc ... but after talking to a few folks if it's well implemented then it's a good deal. So I guess I'm going to buy some more 1.5 drives and do a openSuse software raid 5.

Anyone have a better idea?