Advise on RAID needed
Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 4:15 am
Hi,
I'm thinking of building raid array from my drives but need some advise.
My mobo supports intel matrix raid.
My choices are:
1) Building Raid 1 drives with my pairs of 2x300GB and 2x500GB drives. But this reduces my capacity by 50%!
2) Using Intel Matrix Raid to make a 3x300GB (utilizing a 300GB ?partition? of my 500GB) drive and use the remaining 500GB as well as the 200GB partition as stand-alones. [I am told this is possible with Intel's Matrix Raid].
Now, my concerns are data safety and space efficiency.
I am worried that even with raid 5 using Intel Matrix or any other Raid 5 technology, if my raid controller crashes (in this case the mobo), my data will be unrecoverable.
Am I correct in thinking that raid 5 only offers the appearance of data safety but it's almost as bad as raid 0, since mobo failures are quite common (I have it happening to me about once every 3-5 years depending on the mobo I use)? I am now thinking that raid 1 is the only option for me and I'll have to sacrifice the space efficiency. Is this correct?
I'm thinking of building raid array from my drives but need some advise.
My mobo supports intel matrix raid.
My choices are:
1) Building Raid 1 drives with my pairs of 2x300GB and 2x500GB drives. But this reduces my capacity by 50%!
2) Using Intel Matrix Raid to make a 3x300GB (utilizing a 300GB ?partition? of my 500GB) drive and use the remaining 500GB as well as the 200GB partition as stand-alones. [I am told this is possible with Intel's Matrix Raid].
Now, my concerns are data safety and space efficiency.
I am worried that even with raid 5 using Intel Matrix or any other Raid 5 technology, if my raid controller crashes (in this case the mobo), my data will be unrecoverable.
Am I correct in thinking that raid 5 only offers the appearance of data safety but it's almost as bad as raid 0, since mobo failures are quite common (I have it happening to me about once every 3-5 years depending on the mobo I use)? I am now thinking that raid 1 is the only option for me and I'll have to sacrifice the space efficiency. Is this correct?