RAID Array

[mod1fied]

I need to setup an array on a new system that i'll be putting together.

The plan is this:
1x 160GB drive for OS
2/3x 500GB drives for RAID storage
1x External backup drive with scheduled rsync.

Now ive been looking at either RAID1 with 2 drives or RAID5 with 3 drives but one thing is of a slight concern and that is with RAID5 performance on writes is generally slower than one disk.

The files being stored are mainly office documents and a few large customer databases. With the possibility of a MySQL server being setup sometime in the future.

Would I be better off going for a 3 drive RAID5 with rsync backup or just stick to RAID1?

Edit: On another note, unless I can get the extra funding this will need to be done through FakeRAID or Linux RAID using mdadm.

 

[master811]

Have you thought about using Raid3, you'll get better write performance in some cases, and if a drive does die, it won't cause the whole array to slow down (incl reads) until you get another drive in place. (Only thing is Raid3 controllers might be a bit pricier/harder to find).

 

[mod1fied]

Well I know mdadm supports Raid4 which is the same as Raid3 except it does "block level striping instead of byte level".

 

[mod1fied]

Anyone?