Thinking about RAID 5 with 3 or 4 400GB HDDs. Just want redundancy.

[fuzzybabybunny]

I'm thinking about doing RAID5, but I'm not sure which route to take, either software, onboard, or hardware.

I want protection if a single disk fails.
I don't care that much about speed, just as long as it doesn't dip below the performance of a single un-RAIDed drive, I'm happy.
I don't want it to slow down the rest of the system by a lot. I have a PD 805 dual core.
I don't want to spend $200+ on a RAID card.
This will not be a server environment.

 

[Bobthelost]

Software or onboard (which are more or less the same thing).

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Software or onboard (which are more or less the same thing).

What's the CPU usage of software solutions? Like 3-5%? It won't make my drives slower will it?

 

[CZroe]

Windows Server 2K3 does software RAID5, which is fine if the system is just for network shares. The functionality could be hex-edited into WinXP Pro/Home. Instead, I use two 6-channel Promise SuperTrak SX6000 cards. 3x400GB would equal only 800GB of useable capacity for more than the price of a couple Seagate 850GB drives in RAID0. I'd want at least 5 drives with one hot spare if I was going with 400GB drives. I actually started to purchase 400GB drives for my fileserver but the 500GB versions of the same drive were soon cheaper. I now have 6 500GB 7k500 drives and 6 120GB WD1200JB drives (to be replaced with more 7k500's the next time a deal rolls through).

So yeah, if going for RAID5, go for a balance of capacity and redundancy that makes sense. Performance is not one of the selling points. RAID5 writes will be MUCH slower even with a dedicated CPU.

 

[Jeff7]

I wouldn't say "much" slower. I get write speeds of about 25MB/sec on my 4-drive RAID 5 setup - Promise SX4000 PCI (which has a hardware-assist XOR processor thingy on it) with 7200rpm Seagate 200GB drives. That's about 5-10MB/sec slower than the same drives by themselves. Read speeds are excellent though, usually giving me close to 100MB/sec sustained.


I don't know how much of a hit in performance you'll take if you go the software RAID route.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Don't even think about using SOFTWARE RAID5. If you're using like nForce raid, it's not that bad, but definitely try to get a dedicated card.