Creating a RAID 5

[shrikitiki2011]

I am in need of an external storage solution. I have a lot of movies, photos, and music that I need to be safe.
I am new to running a RAID and I need help with creating a hardware raid via a external enclosure.

Can someone provide me a guide or a build.

Sincerely,
Srikanth

 

[RealBeast]

It depends on your budget, and total storage volume. Take a look at some of the manufacturer web sites.

Drobo, Synology and QNAP all make very good but more expensive, and more reliable network attached storage devices that will do RAID5 and RAID 5 with a hot backup drive. The low end would be someone like Sans Digital. 4 disk RAID 5 is fairly reliable, but as you add disks the risk of loss increases.

Don't rely on RAID for backup though, it is only a fault tolerant storage and should not be entrusted to protect irreplaceable data. And buy higher quality 7200rpm drives that are on the manufacturer recommended list.