What RAID array to use?

[RobbieRoy]

Hi all

For my new build I have the following available drives:

120Gb Samsung 840 EVO (for the OS etc.).
2TB WD Green
two four year old 500 Gb HDDs and a 250Gb one.

It will be a very quiet utility machine good enough for fairly high end gaming, office work, networking around the house and streaming media when needed.

I'm keen to utilise the disks in a RAID array in order to mitigate against data loss and get a performance gain and would appreciate the views of more experienced heads of (a) whether this would really be worthwhile and (b) if so, what would be the best approach to adopt.

Many thanks in advance.

All the best

RR

[shaithis]

You need identical sized devices (or you waste a lot of space) for RAID.

If you really want resilience (and who doesn't?!) you could mirror (RAID 1) the 500GB drives and then get another 2TB and mirror them separately. That would give you 2 resilient volumes.

[RobbieRoy]

Thanks Shaithis - RAID 1 on two 500s and again on two 2Tbs it will be and the SSD left on its own.

Most appreciated!

Cheers

[smargh]

If you value your data, do you have a hardware RAID controller, or is it a low-end built-in RAID on consumer hardware?

[RobbieRoy]

I have an Asus Maximus VII Ranger mobo with, per the manual, Intel Rapid Storage technology which apparently "supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

Is this sufficient?

[Splash]

I'll say the same thing that I say every time someone asks this question: don't use RAID as an alternative to backup. RAID is there to provide availability when a disk fails, but won't help if you get Cryptolocker/your OS corrupts your data/your house burns down/etc etc.

If you're looking to protect your data you need a proper backup routine.

[RobbieRoy]

I agree and see RAID as a second by second security and backing up as the regular archive of safety.