RAID5 Dilemma

[EnderW]

I've got a dilemma of sorts on my hands with regards to my RAID5 array.
I've had 4 x WD3200JD drives in RAID5 on a Broadcom BC4852 for some time now, and it works quite well except a few times, drives have gotten dropped, probably because of the extended error recovery issue.

So recently, I saw a good deal on some 300GB Seagate drives and picked them up.
However, even after a firmware update, they aren't performing very well.


4 x Seagate 300GB RAID5
blue = 3AAH
red = 3AAE

4 x WD3200JD RAID5

1 x Seagate 300GB, no RAID
all 4 drives have similiar scans in single mode

So now I'm not sure what to do. I think my data would be safer on the Seagates, just a lot slower to access.
I'd really like to get 8 x WD2500YD drives - only about $0.35/GB, which is quiet a bit cheaper than the 500GB versions, and I would only lose 250GB for parity compared to 500GB if I did 4 x 500GB.

Ideas?

 

[Megalomaniac]

if you got the ports and the space, sure...
but what about future planning?
what about future online expansion?

anandtech price grabber, and sort by GB per dollar.
the 250 GB drives are available for as little as .27/GB
and the 320 for .31/GB
and 400 for .37/GB