Raid Hard Drive Configurations
What is the best RAID configuration for three SCSI hard drives, and why? {3 Ultra320 72.8GB 15K}?
Depends on what you’re looking for. For max performance and disk space, RAID1; for a balance of both performance and data integrity, RAID5. If you add a fourth drive, the RAID5 performance should increase by a factor large enough to offset the speed advantage RAID1 gives, but if you’re limited to three, and want max performance, RAID1 is the way to go. Just make sure you have a backup solution if you’re data is important.
RAID1 gives the best performance because it doesn’t have to concern itself with writing separate data out to the RAID5 “parity” drive. It simply spans all disks in the array when writing. Read performance is affected as well, since, when reading, additional parity calculations are performed in a RAID5 configuration. RAID1 simply reads the data segmented during the write, and re-assembles it in the proper sequence.
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