RAID 0+1 or RAID 5?

[xycose]

I just spent the last hour or so reading about RAID after picking up 3 500GB seagate drives, and i am planning on picking up a 4th.

My mobo has onboard SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5 (i have an XFX nforce 590 SLI)

Does RAID 0+1 or RAID 5 give me better performance? looking for games mostly, but also just general all around performance.
I would like some protection in case of a drive failure, which is why i narrowed it down to 0+1 or RAID 5, as to my understanding they offer both protection from 1 drive failure and better performance. I also do understand i would get more capacity with raid 5, but that much doesn't matter to me as much as performance since a TB is more space then i need anyways.

So which gives the better performance, RAID 0+1 or RAID 5?

I only bought 3 drives since that was all they had at a very low price, and i was going to buy a 4th at normal price soon. but this brings another question, could I just RAID 3 drives for nearly the same performance, or would a 4th one be the way to go?


Thanks =D

 

[photonboy]

RAID0 means you "stripe" the data between two or more hard drives. It's faster but slightly less reliable.

RAID1 means you "mirror" the data across multiple drives (at least 3). You need at least 3 because the software needs to compare. If it sees a "1" on one drive and a "0" on the second drive which one is right?

If you must RAID then here's my advice:
1) use RAID0 with two drives.
2) use your third drive to store backup pf an IMAGE of your Windows drive using a program like Acronis True Image
3) periodically backup your e-mail and other information to the third drive.

 

[Rock_n_Rolla]

Since you gonna add another drive (as a forth one) then you'll get the best of both
worlds that RAID 0 and 1 has to offer as far as home use and gaming is concerned.

- Set your 2 hdd to RAID 0 for maximum seek, cache, copy/paste, loading times.
(you read about why Raid 0 is so fast right?)

- Set the remaining 2 hdd to RAID 1 for Data parity (mirroring) for better data
protection (you read about Raid 1 too right?)


- For RAID 5, One of the most popular RAID levels. This accomplishes what RAID 0
(not as fast though) and RAID 1 at the same time BUT, this requires a MINIMUM of
3 drives and its performance and security depends on the number of drives it
uses. Usually it is advised having five drives where one is used as a spare.
This will allow for up to TWO drives to fail and the system can keep running.


-- I suggest go for RAID 0 and 1, this will give you much faster seek, read, write
and loading times as compared to what RAID 5 offers and your two remaining
drive (for RAID 1) for you data security.


Hope this helps

 

[sub mesa]

Don't go RAID5 on nVidia MediaShield; their drivers suck and you will be disappointed at the RAID5 write speeds. In fact, i recommend you use a backup instead. Why not create two RAID0 arrays (2x 2 disks in RAID0). That would be like having RAID0+1 but one would be a backup of the other. If you ever have problems with one array, the other should carry a backup. This is more safe for consumers i believe.

You do have to synchronize them, but both Windows and other OS can do this automatically; google a bit about the many ways of syncing two filesystems.