4 SATA drive RAID confirguration

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strikerP4

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 1, 2003
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Ok I just bought some drives and have played around with the setup and wanted to get some feedback on configuration.

I have 4 750GB SATA drives all 7200rpm
Samsung Spinpoint F1
WD Caviar Black
2x WD Caviar Blue

I had the samsung and the WD black drive in a RAID 0 initially and when I got the blue drives I put those in a RAID 0 and was just backing up the first RAID 0 to the second once a week. Now I've configured them in a RAID 5.

Is this the best solution for performance. I'm not terribly concerned with redundantcy I just want to be able to have some sort of protection. I was fine with the once a week back of the RAID 0.
 
I wouldn't mix drives like that in RAID, but that's up to you. Just remember that RAID isn't a replacement for backups.
 
Well, RAID 5 is parity bit, but I don't really know what to do if one of the drives fail....

I just keep multiple drives for the heck of it, with multiple copies (however, that means I have a lot of external hard drives).

However, I have a 1.2TB (technically 2TB) RAID5 serup, and I think is just stripes all the data across, as any data read/write will use all 4 drives at once...
 
I understand what a RAID 5 is. as long as you don't lose more than one drive at any given time you won't lose any data.
My question is this the best perforning configuration for me given my drives.

FYi if you did have a drive fail you would replace it and go into the RAID configuration menu during boot and you would be given an option to have it rebuild your array
 
strikerP4 said:
My question is this the best perforning configuration for me given my drives.
Click to expand...

No. If you want sheer performance, RAID 0 of the WD Blue 750GB HDDs is your best bet AFAIK. Those drives are of varying speeds as well as other differences. So I agree with Blue Fox that I personally wouldn't mix drives like that.
 
Caviar Black drives don't work well in RAID.

For best performance, you would put all 4 drives in RAID 0, and use narrow partitions. Bad idea, though.

You also said you want some protection, which conflicts with best performance. I would put the Blue drives in a RAID 1 mirror for reliability, and keep the others as JBOD.
 
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