RAID 5 v's Disk Mirroring

For a small workgroup server i suggest to have an 2x9GB HD, and have 2GB each on each drive for disk mirroring, if you plan to mirror the system partition then go for disk mirroring.if you have more than 3 drives connected to the same controller than the read performance is better in RAID5 than disk mirroring. the only disadvantage in disk mirring is that you dedicate 50% space for duplicating the data.

Disk mirroring - 2 identical hard disks, if one fails the other can carry on. 2 reads and 2 writes for every access. Therefore can be slow.

Raid 5 - 3 (or more) disks, system writes data on 2 disks and writes a parity check on the last one. If one disk goes the system can continue by working out the missing data from the parity bit. Hardware RAID arrays are usually hot swapable.

The prefered option would be RAID as it is quicker for read/write and more fault tolerant.

Good morning. Your question is a little vague but I will guess as to your intent.

RAID 1 (disk mirroring) uses pairs of hard drive to mirror data by writing identical data to each drive. Should a drive fail, the system continues running. The failed drive can be replaced and the mirror restored from the "good" drive.

RAID 5 (disk striping with parity) uses a minimum of three hard drives to stripe data and parity information about files across all drives. If a drive fails, the system continues to run. The "missing" information is generated by using the parity information to calculate the missing bits.

As to which RAID level to use, you need to consider a couple of things:

1. Will the storage capacity of the system need to grow after the initial install. If so, consider RAID5 because the array is easy to increase in size (add one drive)

2. If simplicity is important due to a lack of IT, consider RAID1.

Any other input requires a better description of the planneduse of the system.

Hope this helps.

If you will not have a specialist in the office but will be monitoring the server remotely, I would definitely go for a RAID-5 solution (preferably with hardware RAID that is hot-swappable).

When your monitoring indicates a drive failure, you cansend out a replacement drive and talk someone through replacing it. With a mirror, you usually have to break the mirror and reboot using a fault tolerant disk (if it's the primary disk that fails).

paul

This question was closed by the author