On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 9:44 PM, Robert Nesius <nesius at gmail.com> wrote: > If you want a large bucket of bits with some protection from crashes, I'd go > RAID 5. Whether you use enterprise class disks or not, buy an extra one and > just set it in the case or a safe place to serve as a hot spare. Chances > are a drive will die, and you can replace the dead drive and rebuild the > array while RMA'ing the dead drive. If you don't intend to buy "RAID edition" drives, go RAID6. The most stressful time in a RAID drive's life is usually a rebuild. That's when you're likely to find that OTHER drive problem that didn't cause the array to fail initially. It can often be recovered, but often /= always. RAID6 means more "wasted" capacity, but you won't think of it as wasted if you ever have a second drive fail during a rebuild. No, I don't work for a hard drive company who wants you to buy more. I do work for a company that sells storage solutions, and I speak from (painful) experience. *sigh* - Justin