Which would be better...

[TrueTenacity]

I'm going to be setting up a 3-disk array on my new pc... which flavour of Raid would be best Raid 1 or Raid 5?

 

[mesarectifier]

Depends - what do you need it for? Is there critical data on this system? What drives are they?

 

[TrueTenacity]

My documents, movies, games, downloads... all the stuff i'd prefer not to lose...

3x WD 250GB SATA II

 

[iroc]

Raid 1 if you don't want to loos your data.
Always make backups of you data raid is not foolproof.

 

[TrueTenacity]

Raid 1 is what i'm using in my current array and there's ah heck-all fault tolerance there...

Like the idea of Raid 5 but 33% space loss on a 3 drive system is pretty hectic...

 

[mnem0nic]

How are you going to set up raid 1 on 3 drives? 3 identical mirrors? 2 mirrors and a hot spare? Either way wasting 66% of your usable space?

Raid 5 will cost you only 33% of your drive space, but (as I have just read) if you are using chipset based raid like nforce4 the raid 5 performance is pathetic.

You could set up a 2 disk raid 1 for your critical data, and have a single disk for other stuff.

 

[PCcashCow]

How are you going to set up raid 1 on 3 drives? 3 identical mirrors? 2 mirrors and a hot spare? Either way wasting 66% of your usable space?

Raid 5 will cost you only 33% of your drive space, but (as I have just read) if you are using chipset based raid like nforce4 the raid 5 performance is pathetic.

You could set up a 2 disk raid 1 for your critical data, and have a single disk for other stuff.

RAID 5 can seriously slow down a system more so than what raid 1 does. Im not to sure you understand how raid arrays work. What raid controller do you have, and what type of system is this going in?

Raid 1 puts less stress on your machine and involves less degregation when a drive fails. While raid 5 works hard with the swap file and works best on a scsi contoller beucase it will save cpu cycles. I thnk you should might be best using raid 0 + 1 by getting another drive for even numbers.

 

[emogoch]

Raid 1 is what i'm using in my current array and there's ah heck-all fault tolerance there...

Like the idea of Raid 5 but 33% space loss on a 3 drive system is pretty hectic...

I think you're confusing RAID 1 with RAID 0.

RAID 0 - Data striping: your data is spread out across multiple drives for quicker access and higher transfer speeds. No data loss occurs among the hard drives, but there is no fault tolerance (one hard drive dies, data on all hard drives is lost).

RAID 1 - Data Mirroring: Each disk in the RAID 1 array is a copy of each other. Each write operation is performed on each disk. No data loss occurs should a drive fail number of drive that can fail while still keeping your data is all but one disk), but the total available space is equal to the smallest disk on the array (typically a 50% space loss with a 2 drive array)

 

[jap0nes]

I'm going to be setting up a 3-disk array on my new pc... which flavour of Raid would be best Raid 1 or Raid 5?

i would put 2 disks in a raid0, with os and apps, and the third one for backup.
although mirroring is a easier way to secure your data, if you have problems with one of the disks or even the controller will be a little pain in the a55 to recover.
my personal opinion, by the way

 

[mnem0nic]

i would put 2 disks in a raid0, with os and apps, and the third one for backup.
although mirroring is a easier way to secure your data, if you have problems with one of the disks or even the controller will be a little pain in the a55 to recover.
my personal opinion, by the way

Just be sure that if you do this you understand that "raid0" is actually an oxymoron. There is NO data redundancy (maybe they should call it "aid0"). From the original post I assumed that having redundant data was the point of the array since the question was about preference between raid1 and raid5.

Raid 0 is for speed and speed only, and actually increases your chance for data loss (by depending on 2 or more drives to not fail).

 

[Alpha_Magnum]

You want the speed of a 0 Array across 2 matched drives so for redundancy you will need 4 matched drives thusly the speed of the 1st pair is matched by the speed of the 2nd pair, so that you can stripe and mirror. If speed is not your bag then your third drive needs to be the same as the total of the first pair so you can mirror pair 0 to disk 1


You could put all 3 in a 0 array and do regular backups to another system or to media or to another array according to a schedule with backup software.

4 drives of the same size and speed will allow you to run a 0/1 (stripped/mirrored set)

 

[jap0nes]

i would put 2 disks in a raid0, with os and apps, and the third one for backup.
although mirroring is a easier way to secure your data, if you have problems with one of the disks or even the controller will be a little pain in the a55 to recover.
my personal opinion, by the way

Just be sure that if you do this you understand that "raid0" is actually an oxymoron. There is NO data redundancy (maybe they should call it "aid0"). From the original post I assumed that having redundant data was the point of the array since the question was about preference between raid1 and raid5.

Raid 0 is for speed and speed only, and actually increases your chance for data loss (by depending on 2 or more drives to not fail).
uhhhh yeah, i know exactly how each raid mode works.
but, from the original post, the question is a little bit vague. he asked which would be better, but he didnt say if it was speed, security or both. As he asked between raid 1 and 5, i supposed he wanted speed and security.
So, my advice was given towards that option... raid0 (speed0) and a second disk for security.
Like i said, mirrored disks offer a little bit of a hassle to unexperienced people. As the OP had a doubt between these two modes i belive he doesnt have much experience with this kind of setup, that's why he asked for help....

 

[mnem0nic]

uhhhh yeah, i know exactly how each raid mode works.
but, from the original post, the question is a little bit vague. he asked which would be better, but he didnt say if it was speed, security or both. As he asked between raid 1 and 5, i supposed he wanted speed and security.
So, my advice was given towards that option... raid0 (speed0) and a second disk for security.
Like i said, mirrored disks offer a little bit of a hassle to unexperienced people. As the OP had a doubt between these two modes i belive he doesnt have much experience with this kind of setup, that's why he asked for help....

Sorry, It was a bit ambiguous, but I wasn't replying back to you jap0nes. I assumed you knew that stuff already.

 

[TrueTenacity]

Aaaah forgive me boys... had a blonde moment there...

Running a raid 0 array at the moment...

and i will just hang onto the raid 0 array on the new pc... will use my current aray toback up the mission critical data...

Ta for all the input...

Now does anyone know when the Conroe's for desktop are gonna come out?

 

[TrueTenacity]

Hell you know what... considering that the nVidia board i intend to get supports 6 SATA drives it shouldn't prove to be too much of a problem to plug in the 4 drives of my proposed new system and the two drives from my old system to use as a backup...

that way i can use raid 0 with safety and have 3/4 of a TB space to use