Server Hard Drive Speed - 4 HD's or 2?

[MrBridger]

Hi all,

I have a question with regard to Hard Drive Speed for which I am unable to find an answer to on the web. I am updating my Exchange Server and would like to know whether to employ 4 x 72 GB hard drives or 2 x 146 GB, both using RAID 5, ?

The 146G option is a lot more cost effective but I am wondering wil this hamper its performance in relation to speed? Obviously there will be multiple users accessing data simultaneously so the data access nature will be random.

I would greatly appreciate any advice from anyone on this subject, particularly anyone with any experiance with this little poser?!

Thanks in advance,

-Mr. Bridger.

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"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!!"
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[NickFerrar]

Well you need 3 disks minimum for RAID5 to start.

Generally more disks is better performance but there's probably no noticeable difference between 3 and 4 disks.

If disk performance is critical make sure you get the 15k rpm drives to, not sure if these are available in 72 and 146GB sizes though.

 

[MitchCumstein]

The optimal configuration generally is:
C: - Operating System - 2 drives - RAID 1
D: - Log Files - 2 drives - RAID 1
E: - Data store - 3 drives - RAID 5

That is, if you can fit 7 drives into the server. The OS and log drives don't have to be big (9 or 18 GB)