Quote:
Originally Posted by BAN SUVS
Actually I don't see the advantage of RAID 5 over RAID 1+0 (not that there aren't any... 1+0 just seems simpler and has all the redundancy you'd need). Not that that's entirely relevant to the topic... which reminds me, sorry about all the OT in your classifieds thread Juice! 
I'm more concerned with not having data only on a single drive to protect against drive failure. If the place burns down, then I'm just screwed. That's what renters/homeowners insurance is for; I'll have a pretty sweet multi-site data storage setup v 2.0 after I get that fat lump-sum check. And if users can't figure out how to map a network drive, they probably don't have a pressing need for strong data protection. |
Having 4 drives means 4 times the likelihood of a failure. Granted, there's no data loss, but you're still down until you rebuild the array. For most home users, a single large drive, replaced every two years is an extremely economical and reliable solution. It's not like your mp3 and porno collection is exactly "mission critical".
RAID 5 has a huge advantage over RAID 0+1, you get nearly twice as much space on the array for the same number of disks. Five drives in a RAID 5 gives you the same space as
eight drives in RAID 0+1. The *only* reason to ever use a mirroring solution is if you need no loss of performance if a single drive fails.