Raid 5 or 10?

[GJohn]

Right now I have 2 640GB drives...i could get another one to run in Raid 5 or two more to run in Raid 10...

Basically I want protection and speed. Which one you guys think would be better?...getting the additional drives is not an issue.

Please help me decide, its my first time doing something like this...

 

[Christobevii3]

Speed in what? Raid 5 even with a hardware controller has poor write speeds. Reading from raid 5 with 4 x 1 TB to 300GB is 120MB/s, but writing to the raid 5 is like 40MB/s with a 3ware 9650se 8 port. Get 4 and run raid 10 if it isn't just pure storage

 

[Blue Fox]

That would be with a low end controller. Something decent will have read speeds not too far from RAID 0. RAID 10 is of course the cheaper and easier route. If you don't have a hardware RAID controller, I would just buy an extra drive and go RAID 10. Just don't forget that RAID only protects from physical drive failure and that it isn't backup.

 

[GJohn]

That would be with a low end controller. Something decent and will have read speeds not too far from RAID 0. RAID 10 is of course the cheaper and easier route. If you don't have a hardware RAID controller, I would just buy an extra drive and go RAID 10. Just don't forget that RAID only protects from physical drive failure and that it isn't backup.

In that case, would not it be better if i go with Raid 0 with 2 drives that i have right now?

 

[Blue Fox]

That offers even higher failure rates than a single drive, however, read speeds would be pretty decent.

 

[CarlsonCustoms]

As long as you are very very diligent about backups raid 0 is fine. I'm using two 640's in a raid0 and its pretty fast actually.

Raid 10 is pretty fast too except cost per GB is the most expensive since you need 4 drives for the space of 2.

Zack