Raid 0+1 or Raid 5?

[DH]

Hi all,

I'm getting 4 x 250GB Western Digital WD2500YD SATA2 hard discs and was wondering which RAID level to use.

0+1 will give me just under 500GB to play with - plenty for now, but I was wondering which will give me the most SPEED?

I realize Raid 0 is faster than Raid 5 generally, but since this configuration will have a stripe of only two discs, mirrored, will it actually be slower than Raid 5 which will have FOUR discs striped? Even with the parity overhead, surely reading from/writing to four discs simultaneously will be quicker than just two?

FYI I'll be using the nVidia Raid controller on a Gigabyte K8N51GMF-9 mainboard.

I'm interested to hear ppl's opinions on this.

Thanks!

 

[Nitestick]

RAID 5 would probably be better in this case. too much drive space lost in a RAID 0+1 array although i guess it really is the best combination of redundancy and speed.

 

[King X13]

you are comparing 2 different kinds of raid. what do you want to do, have backs up or more space?

Raid 0+1 would give you 500 megs on 2 drives to store data, and 500 megs on 2 drives that would back up that first set.

Raid 5 would just give you 1 terabyte to store data on and have no back up.

plan Raid 0 dont even bother. if you want space go raid 5. if you want back ups go raid 0+1. its not really an opinion as much as it is what would be benifical to you.

 

[Ste]

RAID 5, with RAID 5 its much like stripping however if you lose 1 HD you won't lose your data, you will just need to reconstruct it.

The best example is if you have three drives, for RAID 5 lets say
Drive A=1 Drive B=7 Drive C =8.

1 + 7 = 8.

Therefore losing 1 Drive you would easily be able to reconstruct the lost data much like an expression with 1 Piece missing.

If you want a Cross Between 0 and 1 then IMO go with RAID 5.
(Also if you didn't realize this you need at least 3 Drives for RAID 5, he has 4 which is fine also.)