Raid-5 or Raid-1 1

[bindu143]

Hi
I have a old Dell Power Edge Server 2950 which was configured for raid 5 with 4 hardisk of each 80 GB and was running our Extranet Web server . Now i have brought a new Dell Server Power Edge R410 which has got 4 hardisk in it and each of 160GB .Iam going to take a bare metal image of our existing server using paragon software and push on to the new server.
Please tell me if i can go for raid 5 or raid 1.
Any sugessions appreciated

Thanks

 

[cpjust]

Do you mean RAID 10? RAID 1 is just a mirror image of another hard drive. Having 4 hard drives with exactly the same data would be pointless unless you're expecting to have a LOT of hard drives fail at the same time.
RAID 10 is where you have a combination of RAID 1 & RAID 0 which gives you a boost in speed and the security of RAID 1.
With 4 drives, I'd go with RAID 10.

 

[bindu143]

Sorry Its not raid 1. I meant Raid 10
Thanks.In Raid 10 if 2 HD fails will i be able to recover still
Thanks

 

[cpjust]

Yes, but only if the 2 HD's are from different mirrors.
Here's a good explanation of RAID 10:

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_10.html

 

[technome]

In Raid 10 if 2 HD fails will i be able to recover still"

In a 4 disk raid 10, two disk are mirrored mirrored pair), then the other two drives are mirrored, then the two mirrored pairs are striped. You can lose one of the disks in each mirrored pair, and all is well. If you lose two disks of any mirrored pair in a raid 10, your out of luck.
In a 4 disk raid 10, you can lose 1 disk guaranteed. If another fails, you have a 50% chance it does not belong to the mirrored pair which already had a failed disk. Should you be so unlucky as to have both drives of a mirrored pair fail, the array dies as the created pairs are stripped (raid 0).Overall, your safer with raid 10 then using raid 5, as raid 5 can only sustain 1 drive failure and no more.
The greater the number of drives members in a raid 10 array the greater the chance you will survive multiple disk failures. The raid 10 will be faster/safer overall.
If you have a spare slot for another drive, I would recommend getting another drive, set it up as a global hotspare. Should one of the drives fails it takes it's place and rebuilds in minutes.. which is another advantage over raid 5, rebuilds take hours.
Good luck


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