Which would be faster?
- Thread starter shadowake
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Which hard drive set up would be faster?
3 x 320GB (16MB Cache) in RAID 5
or
2 x 500GB (32MB Cache) in RAID 0
Depends. If it's motherboard 'assisted' raid [IE Intel Matrix RAID, etc], then RAID 0. RAID5 on those adapters is rubbish.
If it's a proper hardware RAID adapter with a chunky cache, chances are RAID5 will perform as well as mobo RAID0 but with the extra safety of a parity disk. RAID0 on the hardware card would be about as fast [no parity writes etc] but lack of redundancy is risky.
Frankly I'd go for broke, get a four port RAID adapter, four 500gb HDs and mount them in RAID10 - which will happily kick the arse off of any mobo RAID setup in terms of both reliability and speed, and give you a full terabyte of highly redundant disk.
Space isn't really my main concern, I have an external drive I use for photos/music etc. Speed/price is key for me.
I've not got a massive budget for hard drives but want decent performance 'bang for buck' from them.
Does RAID 5 allow you to add extra disks later?
It's motherboard RAID no controller, unfortunately either the 2x500GB(32Cache) or 3x320GB(16Cache) are all I can afford ATM.
The 3x320GB disks would be £15 dearer but would this (In RAID 5) be better than the two larger disks with larger 32Mb cache? I don't want to spent extra to find out it's slower and less space!
RAID 5 for the 3 320s would slow reads down to RAID 0 speeds with the two 500GB, but writes would be slower with RAID 5, even with a hardware RAID controller. But you'll get redundancy with RAID 5. RAID 5 is slower on integrated RAID controllers; it has to use the CPU for its parity calculations. Probably go for RAID 0, but backup anything important.
And RAID 5 essentially uses one disk of the array for parity calculations so drive space available is (number of disks x size of smallest disk) - size of smallest disk. So RAID 5 w/ 3x320 gives 640gb space, raid 0 with two 500 gives 1tb but no redundancy.
And RAID 5 essentially uses one disk of the array for parity calculations so drive space available is (number of disks x size of smallest disk) - size of smallest disk. So RAID 5 w/ 3x320 gives 640gb space, raid 0 with two 500 gives 1tb but no redundancy.
