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RAID5 using 2.5" drives

A

Abductor

n00b
Joined
Mar 15, 2009
Messages
59
I want to upgrade my system by using my on-board RAID-controller. I've got space to fit 3 2.5" drives in RAID5 but because of my limited budget SSD's and Raptors are out of the question... besides... don't need that much performance anyway.
I prefer to use WD's 320GB Scorpio Black BEKT drives, but I recently learnt that WD's need TLER support for optimal use is RAID arrays and their Scorpio line supposedly lacks this feature.
So does this mean the Scorpio drives are a no go in RAID? Or is constructing a 2.5" drive RAID-array impossible all together?
 
2.5's in RAID will work just fine, assuming a decent controller. Nevermind TLER, the issue is overblown, the bigger question is why you want raid-5 in the first place and what your application is.

example i've got the supermicro m14t (pictured below except mine is black) populated with 4 x VR300 (300Gb Velociraptors) which I built before SSD prices came down to earth, got it in RAID5 and it's pretty speedy. I've also tested just desktop class 2.5" drives in raid arrays and they work perfectly fine. granted I use them with Areca raid controllers.

you can start by elaborating on your application and getting more concise about your overall budget. it may be that you'd be better off using the budget on a single SSD plus a backup drive. striped raid arrays are for performance and availability, not backup substitutes- but you probably already know that.

SUPERMICRO_CSE-M14T_2.jpg
 
If you don't need performance why not use larger slower drives

you can get 5400rpm 500gb for about the same price as a 320gb black
 
Should've guessed stating the controller would make things more clear: it's Intel's ICH10R.
Well, I'm already using an OCZ Core V2 120GB SSD as my boot drive, with a 2GB Readyboost on the side. For my main storage I'm using 2 older 250GB Samsung Spinpoints with no RAID at all. Accessing larger files takes a lot more time when stored on the HDD instead of the SSD (well duh)
Not to mention the vast amounts of data I've lost over the years with crashing drives and all.
I wanna tackle these problems by using a RAID array. 0+1 means I need 4 drives while I can only house 3. In my view RAID5 still gives plenty of performance and security.
That's where the Scorpio Blacks kick in, even though just 2.5" they still have 16MB cache and 7200rpm to keep things up to speed.
I hope I got the RAID picture the right way, seeing as this wil be my first array.
 
Wouldn't recommend a RAID 5 array using the ICH10R since it would use your PC's CPU to do all of the parity calculations. That means a constant CPU usage ranging from 10% to as high as 50%.

Also RAID is not backup. It just guarantees uptime of your data. So still keep a backup if you want your data to be safe that's not stored on the RAID array. I.e a NAS, file server, external hard drive, etc.
 
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