RAID 5?

[furious5]

I am just about to order a new server, and have been advised to go for a RAID 5 configuration.

Now my question is if I get a RAID 5 configuration I was considering getting 3 X 36GB disks, but what total of disk space would this give me?

I know this may sound a dumb question, but I was just puzzled when thinking about how RAID 5 works.

Also can anyone point me at any decent articles that would help me in getting the server set up with a RAID 5 configuration once I have actually got the server.

 

[wbg34]

Array Size = (Size of Smallest Drive) * (Number of Drives - 1)

Array Size = 36g * 2

72g

As for the configuring the RAID are you buying a Server or Building a Server.

If you are buying a complete server then the raid will be configured for you. Here are some links that may help with understanding Raid a little bit better.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel5-c.html

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html

http://www.microsoft.com/windows200...?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/dm_raid5.htm

 

[Catadmin]

The best way to remember it, if you can't remember the formula wbg34 just posted, is that RAID 5 always takes up 1 disk's worth of space for parity reasons. You do actually get storage on all 3 disks, but 1/3 of that is going to parity for fault tolerence. If you had 5 disks, 1/5 of the disk space would go for parity, etc.

Hope that helps. Catadmin - MCSA

 

[furious5]

Guys that is great cheers for such a quick reply.

That one really puzzled me today when I was trying to spec this server and trying to work out how much disk space we would need.

Thanks for the articles also, I will have a read over these in the next couple of days.

 

[crazyadmin]

One addition to the above.
You must remember that when you format the drives you will lose some space. It is not unheard of for a "36GB" SCSI drive to format to 33GB. So you may only get about 66GB of storage after formatting.
Just giving you a heads up.