RAID 0 in 3 drive vs 4 drive configuration - Achiave 200mb/s

[fishquail]

I currently have a 2 drive RAID 0 array. I can achieve 123 MB/s Read Rate and 123MB/s date write rate. I need to edit uncompressed HD video - so I need a data rate read and write rate of at least 200MB/s.

Will a 3 drive RAID 0 achieve this or do i have to get 4 drives in RAID0?

Note: All drives are: Wester Digital SE16 500gb Sata300. Motherboard is Tyan Thunder K8WE with Dual Opteron 270.

 

[sandmanwn]

a single Wester Digital SE16 500gb Sata300 reads data at about 72mb/s. so if you get 123mb/s with two then your setup is about 88% efficient.

3 will give you 197mb/s if it can maintain its 88% efficiency. although it probably will go down just slightly.

4 will give you somewhere around ~250mb/s


one thing to keep in mind is that the more disks you add to a Raid0 the greater the potential becomes for failure.

i would suggest a 5-6 disk Raid5 if your controller is capable of doing so. the redundancy will come in handy when you least expect it.

 

[fishquail]

I will probably try to do a 4 drive Raid and have an additional drive as backup for important projects.

Thanks!