RAID 5 or 10?

[fathead]

Currently server (xseries 236) has 4 73 GB drives setup as raid 10. We want more speed so should we install 2 additional drives and configure as raid 5 (6 drives), or install 2 and reconfigure the current raid 10 setup (6 drives). This is a SQL server at a multi-site medical clinic. Database is around 10 GB with ~85 users...lots of large reports running all the time.

http://www.ics-ms.com

 

[scsiraid]

Thats not a very large database. What is the stripesize? If its too small, you may be killing your performance. My gut would be to use RAID 5 with a 64K stripesize. Is most of the workload reads? Is this the only array in the box? Is the OS on the same array as the database? Do you have enough memory in the system to avoid paging?