raid 50? 5? 10? which to run?

[LadyJaqie]

in this thread I explain the hardware I gnabbed lately... which includes 8 working SCSI drives and a hardware RAID card that supports 5, 10, 50, and more... however the drives do not seem to have spindle sync on them. Is that required for raid 50? I would love to run that as it seems to be the best option for me.

What I want to use it for is as an OS partition for my workstation, and store my 'must not lose' files on the 120GB drive I have now in a server system (I also back most but not all to CDRs) I want to run SOME type of RAID just incase one drive goes out, as two already have on the previous owner... but what I want from the array is the fastest heavy multitasking performance I can, less storage is ok. I figure as long as I get about 30GB of actual storage space Ill be fine... maybe running 7 drives and the eigth as a swappable spare?

--opinions?

 

[Pixie]

From what I've read (admittedly not enough) I like the idea of RAID 50, if you can use that with the HDs I would.

 

[Ice Czar]

10

since it doesnt entail parity calculations it will be the fastest level
also the most wasteful for capacity, but thats the tradeoff

but go ahead and play with a RAID 50 first to get an idea of what it can do
(if you have the time and inclination) and benchmark it for comparision

BTW nice toys

 

[Zuht]

I would love to play with RAID-50, but as you know it takes a lot of drives... more than I have ever had controller and drives for

But ya, I say whip up a level 50 array, run some benchmarks, then do the same with a level 10. I'd be curious to see the numbers. Oh, and no, RAID-50 does not require spindle sync. The only level I have heard of *requiring* it was something proprietary.